regrettably this is how wars eventually end. the more brutal side exterminates the other side. Rwanda and Bosnia. We prosecute a very few war criminals. Now a trial of the military leader of the Bosnian Serbs will be held. But without the support of his soldiers, and the Serb govt in Belgrade, and the renaissance of Serb Nationalism under Milosevic, the atmosphere wouldn't have been there. The Serbs and Muslims may not have loved each other, but there was some intermarriange and much coexistence between the groups in Tito's Yugoslavia. Without a powerful dictator like Tito, Stalin or Hussein, multiethnic nations often don't 'work'. The day may come where the USA don't work. We shouldn't be so quick to point fingers at other nations; we are as capable of genocide and etnic cleansing within the USA as others were within their multiethnic nations. A total collapse of the dollar could trigger great inter-ethnic tensions, and vague political promises of "change" or appeals to America as the "greatest" nation in the world will not provide dissatisfied people with the identity they need to remain stable and unafraid of groups they may believe are getting a better deal than they.

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Absent a withdrawal date, the surge is a waste of time. Sooner or later, Iran will order another Sadr City uprising, Sunni fighters will retaliate, Maliki's government will fall and the country will go up in flames again.

Iraq is like a leaky dam, with American troops holding their fingers in the holes. As soon as they withdraw, whether it be today or 10 years from now, the dam will burst.

It's that simple.

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This is what I have been my theory for at least seven months (I said as much on my blog back in December ("Bush Mob Follies of 2001" December 30). When there are three million less people to kill (at least one million dead and two million refugees - and that is a conservative estimate) violence will always go down. It has nothing to do with a surge and everything to do with simple mathematics!

And let's not forget the fact that as soon as this so called "surge" commensed in Iraq, viloence went through the roof in Afghanistan. As soon as they start focusing on that country again, violence will go up in Iraq. Call it the Stupid Cycle.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
BARACK STAR!

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is the real problem which needs to be addressed.

The neocons who started this invasion and occupation are only too happy to have us discussing relatively trivial matters like battlefield tactics. This is what historians have accomplished with the American Civil War- discussions and analyses of battlefield tactics but relatively little in the way of "why?".

Whether or not the "surge" worked is like asking whether or not the Tet offensive during the American war against the Vietnamese People "worked".

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There is usually no one factor that wins a war. It's usually a combination.. Additional troops was definitely needed.. Most opponents always said we went in too light! Now that the force levels had been beefed up those same people now say it doesn't work.

Bottom line, casualty levels are going down - a good thing - so it seems it's moving in the right direction.. But no democrat can admit that it's working, especially Obama, he'd lose all the crazies!

So most informed people don't ask if the surge worked, they ask what too so long!

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So not only has violence gone up but the surge was a failure except for the elites at the top as usual. Oh well,

GOD WILL CONTINUE TO SEVERELY PUNISH AMERICA TO ETERNAL DAMNATION FOR MEDDLING IN IRAQ'S AFFAIRS LIKE THAT !!!

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Finally, let us get to the truth of the matter! No one in this fiasco of an administration had or has a clue about other ethnicities. It was assumed that Iraq would be a cake-walk, greeted as liberators, etc. ad nauseam. What no one wanted to admit was that Saddam was actually the cork that held the lid down on the whole thing.

Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, you name it - where there has been strife and war there has been more behind the scenes than what's really being told by the MSM. That said, anyone that has just an inkling of understanding of the Middle East should have been able to foresee the events that are now taking place.

Syria, and Lebanon are housing thousand of Iraqis fleeing for their lives. Whole neighborhoods have been left vacant because the previous inhabitants were either killed or forced to flee. The whole reason for the "surge" (supposedly) was to "give the Iraqi government a chance to get it together politically", yes? Well, in the interim - ethnic cleansing has happened on a massive scale and yet no one wants to talk about that - just lets keep saying how wonderful the surge has been.

The truth is because of ethnic cleansing, the Awakening, and bribes - the "political" process may be working. And yet, McCain and Bush keep defending not just the surge but trying to tout that as reasons why we need to stay the course. This victory that they keep talking about - is it the victory of ExxonMobile/Shell/BP/Chevron control over Iraqi oil? Is that when we should start withdrawing troops.

The al Maliki government has asked us to prepare a timetable for withdrawal. Please, in light of all the "successes", I've got to ask at what point do the pinheads not recognize "success", or is their idea based on what's good for their corporate cronies?

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Surely there is no one out there taking McBush seriously. LOL, I cannot even imagine.

JT
Ultimate Anonymity

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"There is also no oil law, essential to allow foreign investment in developing new fields."


I think we as Americans need to take a much closer look at the oil law being pushed on the Iraqi's by our government. From what I understand, our oil companies would be taking 75% of the net revenue generated by the Iraqi's oil fields when 51% is the regional standard. Apparently the Iraqi government is loathe to sign it for obviously good reason. Considering that the only government ministries protected from looters in the initial invasion were the ministries of the interior and oil, it's just reenforcing a perceived pattern of attempted armed robbery to me.

We as Americans need to start paying attention to these things because they directly affect our reputation and standing in the world. I am so sick of having my country dragged the the mud for the greed and short sighted arrogant stupidity of a few.

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Alright folks, time for everyone to get their stories straight. This idiot assaults everyone for confusing correlation with causation (more troops, less violence) and then goes ahead and does it himself (more segregation, less violence).

First it was "it's a hopeless civil war"
then it was "the surge isn't working because you can't defeat an insurgency"
then it was "the surge isn't working and violence is down because Sadr isn't attacking us"
now its "the surge isn't working because ethnic cleansing was so effective"

evidence anyone? Seriously, considering Juan Cole has run his mouth so prolifically in the past few years about Iraq, we should look up his previous articles, and point out that this guy changes his explanations every week. This is pure track-covering. Everyone who laughed at the "surge" (or whatever it is) now has to come up with some reasons why they're still right.

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Just because science has no explanation for something doesn't make the perception of a connection a superstition, it may be that there is a scientific basis to intuition.

One thing is fairly clear, the minute Pres. Bush praised that sheik, didn't he visit Iraq nd do a photo op with him?. Anyway, I think he sealed that sheiks fate and I wouldn't call that a sign of success. In fact I would say it is a sign of Bush's complete ignorance, and the grave(!) consequences that can have. As of course is revealed in this analysis and in the rest of the Middle East renovation project he started.
Ultimately it is just another example of the failed paradigm of war and force of arms to accomplish anything substantive other than creating the conditions for the next battle! You can call it superstition if you want! But on the other hand we may have our own consequences soon enough. This is not removed from our lives! Your problems and Our problems are just one 'Y' removed from each other and the Y will be explained later in the history books.

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Ruthless people with their tribal/religionism purge/seclude those they see as rivals/heathens.

5+ years in Iraq and nothing--nothing has changed, except for our dead people, our massive debts, and the balance of Iraqi's who would have died under Sadam and those who've died under Iraqi "democracy"--an emerging Mohammad dictatorship.

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This is a good article, even though I only agree with about 98% of it. Reading it reinforces what every body has been saying, there is not a military solution in Iraq. The politics of death that has played out over the last 4 years is mind boggling. The political surge was to stop treating the Arab Sunni and the al-Sadr Shia as terrorists. Once we embraced them as Iraqi, it was easy to get them on our side with some guns and butter. When Bush was parading around on that carrier, the Iraqi patriots were applying the Law of Retaliation and bushwhacking an invader. That is God’s will in their mind. Jesus taught me not to apply that Law but if I was one of them and a US smart bomb had just killed my family, I would have done the same thing. God forgive me but my human nature would have won out, mess with the bull you get the horn. A politician like Obama can do a lot of good in Iraq. He can end the politics of death and start the politics of guns and butter down the right path then get us out. If that happens, Maliki and his Iranian backed government is history. If McCain wins you can count on us to try to prop up the puppet government for another 4 years, so we will need some enemies. Funny in Nam a high body count was winning, in Iraq a low body count is winning. The politics of death is mind boggling.

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Conservatives have been proven wrong once again. They cannot deal with nuance, especially when it comes to Iraq. All that matters is letting the military do whatever it wants. To them, war profiterring, contractor abuse, the immense power Iran wields over the country, and the 4.2 million Iraqi refugees are either unknown or not important.

Brtual ethnic cleansing and sectarian segregation have brought violence levels down, but is that in any way a long-term and sustainable strategy for security and peace? Of course not!!

McCain is qualified to be Commander-in-Chief when he knows almost nothing about Iraq and its internal politics, his view on the war is that it must be "won" and he is the guy to do it, and he continually makes misstatements about the conflict? How many "gaffes" does he have to make for the conservative mainstream media to realize he is incompetent?

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I'm not so sure the our aid to Shi'ite cleansing of Baghdad was inadvertent. It was easy to see what was going on in that city two years ago. A real cynic, the type the Bush administration seems to adopt and nurture, would have seen that eventually there would be only one dominant faction and, voila, no more faction-based violence. Wait for the worst to be over and then send in 10- 20- 30,000 troops (it doesn't matter as long it is a visible number) to claim credit for reduced violence.

If we define victory in terms of quietness, then Iraq simply got up one morning, washed the blood off its hands and said to America, I'm yours. The Shi'ites are, of course, the long term victors in that city. The Sunni's are dead or refugees. But there is less violence.

Here's where I get sick to my stomach: did we send in the surge troops in order to help the Shi'ites expedite ethnic cleansing? Do we know what exactly our troops did in Baghdad besides shoot and get shot at? Was the cordoning off of sections of the city with walls and barriers a way of holding (as in clear, hold and build) sections that the Shi'ites had already cleared?

Given that there would have been little that 30,000 troops could have done on their own to quell the violence, it seems logical that they were sent in to: (a) nail down cleansed territory; and (b) take credit for reduced violence, back home.

This would make the US an accessory to ethnic cleansing (remember, we already do torture).

As for the Awakening, I have long said that all we really needed were a bunch of spooks with brief cases full of money to buy off (temporarily, anyway) the insurgent leaders. We've probably been doing the same with the Iraqi Parliament. Where did those palettes with billions in cash disappear to?

And, if one wants to be really cynical, de-Baathification of the Iraq army was not a mistake (heckuva job, Paulie) and the Shi'itization of the Iraq Parliament was a desired outcome of elections (not held too quickly after all). If one factors in the planned castration of Iran, a Shi'ite controlled Iraq would be toothless in the face of oil looting by Western corporations. Plus the Shi'ites could then take the remaining battles to Sunnistan where violence would not be a big impediment to the delivery of oil.

Result: a controllable Iraq, run by a blustery but impotent Shia, bought off by America and without hope of aid from Iran. Oil flowing freely from Shia and Kurdish territory with residual violence safely tucked away in the oil-starved Sunni lands. The only step remaining is to neuter Iran.

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I keep wondering what this "victory" is that people are talking about, especially Bush and McCain. And who the "enemy" is, that they're forever referring to.

We are backing and filling, trying to "train" or "support" Iraqi police and military forces against -- insurgents? What is an insurgency but an armed dissent to the way things are? We've provoked not only a civil (inter-ethnic or sectarian) war but a revolution against our own presence, which we now want to perpetuate on four giant bases and who knows how many smaller ones, immune from all oversight of law -- to what possible purpose?

There's really only one purpose: See this as the Carter Doctrine in action, amplified by PNAC, and the pieces begin to fit. We're there to secure "our" resources, and it should be nakedly clear. "Victory" in those terms is when everybody gets out of the way of our extracting our oil. Between the new "bidding" process of the big four oil companies and the still-impending SOFA arrangement -- which Bush wants to bypass any legislative process either in Iraq or in the U.S. -- that's exactly what "we" are trying to get squared away.

And I for one, sadly, see no indication from either McCain's camp or Obama's that I'm wrong about this. Nothing they say tells me something else is the point of our being there at all, and I hear only the shallowest "reasons" given for why we should be out of there, from minimizing U.S. casualties to "victory with honor". Nonstop double-talk, which has not let up for more than seven years from our own government, and now from those who want to step in as leaders of a new administration.

Also, we still dangle a sword over our own head, the sword of impending violence against Iran, which can only compound the mess in every way.

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The US is and has been the most violent Country in the history of the world.!!!
Even Rome was tame by comparison.

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JC seems a bit naive here. Ethnic cleansing has seemed a clear likelihood when u.s. and iraqi 'government' forces were targeting militias.

After all, these militias knew the neighborhoods they patrolled (b/c they lived there) and were thus able to avert the car bombs etc sent in.

Schwartz has written extensively about the predictable and probably purposeful ethnic cleansing of iraq.

Why is Juan Cole unwilling to address that possibility here. The article's topic demands it and it goes to the heart of the true intentions of the occupation.

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