[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]
In this election season, much is made of the surge. What is not clear in this ongoing discussion, and what is rarely discussed in the context of the surge, is its original purpose. It is not whether the surge has succeeded militarily (it has, and wildly so), but whether its far more important non-military goals are likely to be achieved. That is, conservatively speaking, the $3 trillion question.
The surge was undertaken against prevailing public opinion, congressional approval, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group findings, the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Just about no one wanted it.
Grudging approval of the surge by those contrary elements was reached using the argument that the president needed a strategy that would bring decreased violence and with it the opportunity for political reconciliation. In 2007, after more than four chaotic years in Iraq, the president needed a policy that would provide the opportunity for “success” – defined as Iraqi political reconciliation.
Most Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama, and some Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Hagel, opposed the surge. Most Republicans, including Sen. John McCain and one Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, supported the surge.
There is little reason to argue about the military success of the surge, for it has been extraordinary and as such, a great credit to our armed forces. Violence is way down, and that is precisely what the president sought when he undertook the surge.
The problem here is that today’s American politicians, who for purely political reasons want or need to be associated with success, are touting the undeniable military success of the surge as its ultimate goal. That is the case with McCain and all those Republicans and Democrats who have supported the Iraq war over the years. Needing the political capital brought by success, they have redefined the word: They no longer speak of national political reconciliation in Iraq, only of military success.
However, there are other factors involved that have nothing whatsoever to do with the surge, but which have had a major calming effect in Iraq.
Apparently our people in Iraq have developed methods that have allowed them to assassinate ranking members of al-Qaida. They have done that to the point where al-Qaida has been substantially weakened.
Further, Muqtada al-Sadr has unilaterally suspended his Sadrist Shia militia attacks on American forces and on his Shia and Sunni rivals. This has had a major calming effect in the country.
The Kurds have simply withdrawn into their historic lands, in effect creating a de facto Kurdistan. They participate in the al-Maliki government, but their only real purpose is to consolidate their post-Saddam gains in furtherance of their own autonomy.
Last, but perhaps most important, in 2007, American forces in Diyala and Anbar provinces began a program called the Sunni Awakening which has enlisted Sunni militias, some 80,000 strong, into the fight against their former allies, al-Qaida. We have paid, armed and trained these militias, which had formerly fought side by side with al-Qaida against our forces. They have been most effective.
The result has been that a diminished al-Qaida fights us alone; the Sunnis are allied with us and not killing us or Shia; and the main Shia militias have withdrawn from the battlefield, at least for the moment. These elements alone have probably had at least as much to do with the drop in violence as the surge.
However, the purpose of creating this lull in violence was to establish an environment conducive to reconciliation between Iraq’s traditionally warring factions. That has not happened.
Under the best of circumstances, such reconciliation is extremely difficult and improbable. These people really hate each other and if past is prologue, will live peacefully only under smotheringly oppressive rule. Turn them loose, as we have, and all those centuries-old animosities come to the surface.
Despite the lull in violence, all the old issues remain. The al-Maliki government has so far failed to schedule critical national elections. In a curious way, the Sunni Awakening turnabout represents an additional threat to the peace. The al-Maliki government is not only Shia, but highly partisan. It is wildly suspicious of the other ethnic and religious groups, the Kurds and the Sunnis. Unless the al-Maliki government integrates those Sunni militias into the army and police, which it has persistently refused to do, they will represent the potential for increased, severe future Sunni on Shia violence.
Certainly if that happens, the Shia Sadrists will re-evaluate, further weakening the prospects for reconciliation. Thus, all of the elements which caused the instability before the surge are intact, or even strengthened and waiting to protect their own interests against the others’.
However successful, if the surge does not enable an Iraqi national reconciliation, it will not “succeed.” There is not much history that argues for that ultimate success.
