I caught a story on NPR this morning about the success of the surge in reducing violence in Iraq.

I’ve been reluctant to call it a success, since the whole point was to give the various parties the breathing room (lebensraum?) necessary to reach a political settlement. That hasn’t happened, and isn’t any more likely than it was before. The surge has been a strategic failure, and to pretend that it was a success is to set the bar so low that one loses sight of any strategic purpose for our occupation of Iraq.

But nevertheless, it’s indisputable that violence in Iraq has dropped considerably in the last year. The various experts being interviewed on NPR attributed this to (1) the increase in the American troop presence, (2) a cease-fire by a Shiite militia, (3) the fact that most of the violence was in Baghdad’s integrated neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods have since has been ethnically cleansed, and (4) a new American military program called Concerned Local Citizens, which is exactly as much of a euphemism as it sounds like.

I’ve been skeptical of (1), but upon further review, it’s not as silly as it seems. In terms of the population, it’s analogous to Madison hiring 220 new police officers. That could have a salutary effect on crime, even if those police officers didn’t speak English, were trained (understandably so) to shoot first and ask questions later, and were not accountable to the local government. It’s not clear that such an arrangement would be beneficial, even in a place as war-torn as central Iraq, but it’s not completely out of the question.

(2) may or may not be an artifact of (3), which is a simple defeat. Violence is down because the bad guys have achieved their objective. A victory for the surge this is not. As for (4), CLC is a program I had not heard of before, but the story on NPR put a lot of emphasis on it as a main driver of the reduced violence.

Basically, we’re paying a quarter of a billion dollars a year as salary to ex-militiamen, former AQI, members of various local gangs, et al., to set up road blocks and defend their own freaking villages. By serving as a front line of defense, they can hopefully reduce the number of attacks, and also make it more likely that those attacks will happen at roadblocks manned by Iraqis, instead of in civilian areas or among American troops.

It’s a ridiculous arrangement, although it certainly makes sense for the American military to promote it. Compared to the enormous resources we have poured into Iraq over the last five years, $250 million is a very small amount. The people in charge of military operations are smart enough to know that there’s little or nothing they can do to affect a political settlement, so they’re understandably focusing their efforts on preventing American casualties, and trying to get the Iraqis to provide for their own security (even if we have to pay them to do it).

But while this makes perfect sense for the American military, it makes no sense at all as American foreign policy. Instead, it clarifies the point that there’s no critical mission for our army to accomplish in Iraq, and that we should leave.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 10:45 am, 8 January 2008 and filed under War and Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.