Is The Iraq War Over?
(My Caption: “Yo, dog! Thanks for coming! Here’s our secret handshake of the He-Man Burka-Haters Club … You’re now an official member”.“)
by Michael J. Totten - (Commentary Magazine)
Independent reporter Michael Yon has spent more time in Iraq embedded with combat soldiers than any other journalist in the world, and a few days ago he boldly declared the war over:
Barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it’s time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.
I’m reluctant to say “the war has ended,” as he did, but everything else he wrote is undoubtedly true. The war in Iraq is all but over right now, and it will be officially over if the current trends in violence continue their downward slide. That is a mathematical fact.
If you doubt it, look at the data.
Security incidents, or attacks, are at their lowest level in four years. Civilian deaths are down by almost 90 percent since General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency “surge” strategy went into effect. High profile attacks, or explosions, are down by 80 percent in the same time period. American and Iraqi soldiers suffer far fewer casualties than they have for years. Ethno-sectarian deaths from Iraq’s civil war plunged all the way down to zero in May and June 2008.
Yon is braver than the rest of us for declaring the war over, but it’s important to understand that there are no final battles in counterinsurgencies and it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact dates when wars like this end. The anti-Iraqi insurgency – a war-within-a-war – really is effectively over. As long as another such war-within-a-war doesn’t break out, Yon will appear more perceptive than the rest of us in hindsight when the currently low levels of violence finally do taper off into relative insignificance.
None of this means terrorism and violence in Iraq are over. Violence is never over in the Middle East, and Islamist terrorism will be with us for years, if not decades. There may yet be another war, a different war, in Iraq. It would be foolish to dismiss that possibility or assume there is no more work to be done. NATO is still not finished building a durable peace in Kosovo, and the war in that country ended nine years ago.
The 15-year civil war in Lebanon ended in 1990, but another low-grade civil war that eerily resembles the last is brewing again. The Algerian civil war between the secular police state and the Salafist insurgency quietly wound down years ago, but al Qaeda cells are doing their worst to crank it back up again. The Second Intifada was broken in Israel, but there is still no peace between Israel, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Palestinian Authority. There are no clean endings to wars in the Middle East these days, and we shouldn’t expect one in Iraq either. But there is a point when a war becomes low-grade enough that “war” is no longer the best word to describe what takes place in the absence of absolute calm.
What most of us still think of as “war” in Iraq is, at this point, a rough and unfinished peacekeeping mission. Whether it is officially over or not, it has certainly been downgraded to something else, and it’s about time more analysts and observers are willing to say so.
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About The Top Picture:
Shake on It
Spc. Gregory Kastner, a native of Excelsior, Minn., greets two Iraqi boys, July 2, while on patrol in a marketplace in the Taji Qada, northwest of Baghdad. Kastner is a communications specialist assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment Wolfhounds, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team Warrior, 25th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division Baghdad. Photo by Sgt. J.B. Jaso III. (MNF-I)
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The war is over when the enemy surrenders or our military says it’s over, ideally both.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:26 pmI read Yon and respect his take.
Over ‘officially’ or not, IRAQ is pwned thanks to our men and women in uniform.
Now we need the same kind of grassroots campaign to get these Dhimmis to DRILL NOW!! and get them thrown out of office on their collectivist asses.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:35 pmThe work of Yon, Totten and of course, Dollard has sustained me and given me hope for success in Iraq through some pretty bleak times in the last five years.
With regard to Afghanistan, I personally think the enemy has decided that Iraq was a losing proposition and has diverted their resources to a somewhat softer target and would rather fight NATO while hitting and running from Pakistan. Once the Afghanistan situation begins to resemble present day Iraq, they’ll open another front. My money’s on Pakistan, where they will make life so miserable for the Paki people that Islamabad will beg to be invaded by US troops.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Steve Rogers;
July 16th, 2008 at 4:55 pmGood and interesting point about Pakistan.
I like Yon, one the few journalists rooting for our military
July 16th, 2008 at 5:29 pmkeep up the good work soldiers
July 16th, 2008 at 10:56 pmThe great secret untold about Iraq is that AQI is indeed leaving Iraq in droves for softer targets in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. That and our persistent pounding of their asses is forcing them to redeploy elsewhere.
Let the US military and the Iraqi government to decide when it is time to boogey to another battlespace. However, I agree that the war in Iraq is a resounding success and a huge win for the west against the Islamo-facists and their cult of the dead.
In Afghanistan, we have ignored Waziristan for too long. The future of freedom or some reasonable facimile thereof in Afghanistan lies in Waziristan. Until and unless we and the Afghanis deal with that reality, the long war in Afghanistan will go on and the casualty rates will continue to climb.
Waziristan is the Ho Chi Minh trail for AQA and the Taliban.
July 17th, 2008 at 5:36 amBombing it is not enough. We need to put boots on the ground and attack their bases in order to secure Afghanistan and stop AQA and Taliban infiltrators.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.VincentvanGoghVincent van Gogh
July 26th, 2008 at 7:38 am