The Pull Out Method (Pt. II)

The long anticipated report to Congress from America's commanding General and its Ambassador to Iraq has finally passed. It looks to have been a waste of time in some ways - looking at the response of the Democratic senators, they've long since made their minds up about things so the last couple of days' testimony wasn't going to change a great deal in reality. Democrats want the US to pull troops out of Iraq as soon as possible and in any event to have as many as possible out of Iraq before January 2009, when they are fairly likely to take over the White House and it becomes their headache.

General Petaeus predicted that troop levels should be able to return by next summer to the pre-surge levels of 130,000, because violence in Baghdad and the western Anbar province has dropped. This ignores the fact that violence overall - if you take into account cities outside of Baghdad - has slightly increased. Perhaps more importantly, the US cannot maintain current troop levels beyond another 8 months. Rotations have been extended time and again and the strain is biting. The purpose of the testimony before Congress is to make it look like Bush has the ability to choose when to reduce troop numbers.

One thing I found interesting was the amount of mention given to Al Qaeda. It roughly goes, "we have been successful in pushing Al Qaeda out of Anbar and if we were to pull troops out then Al Qaeda would take control and be a big threat to the US". That's just ridiculous. First off, it was the Sunni tribal leaders' decision that they didn't want AQ in their area anymore that resulted in the stabilisation of Anbar. Instead of fighting against the US, the Sunni tribal chiefs joined forces with them to get rid of AQ. Second, although the headline violence is often committed by AQ (truck bombs etc) AQ probably only accounts for about 5 - 10% of the insurgency in Iraq. Third, Iraq has a Shia majority population and government (and security forces) and Iran next door so it's laughable to suggest that AQ, which is largely Sunni, would be able to overrun Iraq.

Politically, the situation is dire. Maliki's "unity" government is a shambles and reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites is non existent.