Surging in place
The International Crisis Group has released their report “Iraq After the Surge”. So how are we doing?
Against the odds, the U.S. military surge contributed to a significant reduction in violence. Its achievements should not be understated. But in the absence of the fundamental political changes in Iraq the surge was meant to facilitate, its successes will remain insufficient, fragile and reversible. The ever-more relative lull is an opportunity for the U.S. to focus on two missing ingredients: pressuring the Iraqi government to take long overdue steps toward political compromise and altering the regional climate so that Iraq’s neighbours use their leverage to encourage that compromise and make it stick. As shown in these two companion reports, this entails ceasing to provide the Iraqi government with unconditional military support; reaching out to what remains of the insurgency; using its leverage to encourage free and fair provincial elections and progress toward a broad national dialogue and compact; and engaging in real diplomacy with all Iraq’s neighbours, Iran and Syria included.
So, basically our troops have had their benefits cut, their tours extended, and still managed to clamp down on the violence to give the politicians the breathing room they needed to form a government. For the politicians’ part, they have bungled it even worse than before. For the military’s trouble, those politicians get to tout our troops’ success so they can justify extending out troops tours even longer.
Hasn’t this pretty much been the theme of the war?
You can download the PDF version here.
Tags: International Crisis Group, Iraq after the surge, political progress