Image is Everything

From wire reports: The remarkable progress seen over the past eighteen months and especially this summer in Iraq is both cause and effect of a change in perception. For years Iraqi’s have mistrusted Americans for fear of being left to face a terrible fate in a precipitate withdrawal. They’ve had good reason. Americans left Somalia when the going got tough and that wasn’t the first time. Bush Sr. encouraged Iraqis to rebel against Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War, then looked the other way while Saddam responded with a vengeance. Since the day Saddam fell the American press has been relentlessly pronouncing chaos, impending doom, and defeat in Iraq. The chorus of calls for withdrawal became deafening last month in an all night senate debate on legislation to force the issue. I wouldn’t have trusted Americans either.

But it didn’t happen. Americans didn’t leave. Bush Jr. was reelected in 2004 on a pledge to stay the course. It has become increasingly, some would say painfully obvious he meant just that. American troops will remain at least until Bush leaves office in 2009. That’s eighteen months away. By then there may be no insurgency left in Iraq worthy of the name. More and more Iraqis are deciding the prudent thing to do is cast their lot with the apparent winner, a government growing stronger. That idea has now been reinforced with a temporary increase in force levels. For many in the United States the surge looked like a desperation move. That’s how it looked to me. Iraqis took it as commitment.

Army and police recruiting are both up, in some areas dramatically so. Corruption and militia infiltration are down. Leadership is improved. People are returning to homes abandoned only a few months ago. Sector by sector stabilization and turnover to internal Iraqi security forces has proceeded slowly and with fits and starts, especially in Baghdad, but it has proceeded. The pace is accelerating. Looked at over time the progress is startling. The pentagon published a chart showing areas more or less under Iraqi control in June compared to a year earlier. Take a look.

http://www.defenselink.mil/home/dodupdate/iraq-update/Handovers/index.html

Nay sayers will pick the chart apart but Iraqis are voting with their lives and the lives of their families. They are saying the chart fairly represents conditions on the ground. They are climbing onto the bandwagon that promises security. That has always been the critical issue. Security usually trumps ideology. Al Qaeda in Iraq is trying to recreate conditions that brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. Most Afghans didn’t want the Taliban but anything was better than chaos and no one else seemed capable of restoring order. But al Qaeda in Iraq isn’t a solution to disorder. They are a principle cause of it. Now that they appear to be losing, people who once tolerated them out of fear are turning against them in droves. That’s what we are seeing this summer in al Anbar province, once one of Iraq’s most intransigent. Something like that is happening in other provinces too. Militias and armed gangs are losing their luster. The change in perception is palpable.

None of this suggests the war is won, certainly not that our troops will be home by Christmas. Iraq remains a very dangerous place. There are still daily reports of roadside bombs, rocket and mortar attacks, and the attendant casualties. That will likely continue for some time. Security will be fragile and the politics volatile. I expect American troops may be in Iraq for years. But suddenly the un-winnable war is looking a lot more winnable.