The evidence is scant, but it’s there:
Ali Yussef / AFP/Getty Images
Children jump and run as Iraqi troops arrive in their neighborhood to distribute food rations in the impoverished Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad. Iraqi troops poured into the Baghdad Shiite bastion of Sadr City three days ago for the first time in eight weeks, without resistance from militias who have fought deadly street battles with US forces.
Iraq violence falls to four-year low, U.S. says
The military says crackdowns by the Iraqi government are working, and that the number of attacks has dropped to about 300 a week from 1,600 in June.
The other day in the Times, Bill Kristol quoted a Marine helicopter pilot:
“I was in Iraq from the 2nd to the 12th this month. In my current job I go over there twice a year for two weeks to collect lessons learned and fly a few sorties …
“The biggest deal for me was the fact that even after we have pulled out thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops, peace continues to hold in Anbar. In fact, I was shocked by two things when flying over Ramadi and Fallujah. First, the streetlights are back on. It is crazy to see Iraqi cities lit up completely, and since they are all on grid power now, you don’t see the crazy black/brown outs when you fly over and the generators pop like you would back in 2005/6. The power now seems to extend even into the suburbs and light industry on the edges of the major cities as well.
“Second, there are people, regular civilians, walking the streets at night. That was very unusual and got the visitor (me) laughed at when I told our terminal controller that I had personnel walking down a street on the radio.”
Most people would mock such “progress,” and of course they’re right to. No one who refers to it as “progress” would ever consider living under such conditions. It’s the height of arrogance to claim this resumption of some normalcy in some pockets of Iraq as a success. It is only a small half-step up from the hell unleashed by the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the “coalition of the willing’s” occupation of an alien country ruled by tribal passions, located in a region little understood by those who made war on it.
This ignorance is evident from what the locals in Basra have told NYT reporter Stephen Farrell, who also reports on progress but (wisely) never uses that word [e.a.]:
With the death squads in hiding and Islamist militias evicted from their strongholds by the Iraqi Army, few doubt that this once-lawless port is in better shape than it was just two months ago. …
Two months after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered the military offensive, residents of Basra talk of feeling safer, if not yet entirely safe, after years of oppression by armed gangs and “enforcers” of Shariah, or Islamic law. In the four years that British troops patrolled here, from 2003 to late 2007, the outlaws emerged and preyed on musicians, alcohol sellers, Christians, unveiled women, academics — anyone not embracing their extreme vision of Islam.
Now the shops and restaurants in Basra are open later, and alcohol is back on sale, discreetly. The government’s troops seem to have quelled Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other militias. …
In the inevitable post-mortems, a principal question has been whether the multinational troops in southern Iraq, led by the British, should have rid the city of its gangsters long ago. …
But Iraqis are asking why it didn’t happen years ago …
Aside from the fact that it’s ridiculously impertinent and impudent and nervy for Iraqis to ask why, during the hell on earth that was this war in its early years, the coalition didn’t save them from sharia sooner, it turns out that cultural and demographic differences have played a big role in the outcomes in different parts of Iraq:
[In Basra], mafia-style Shiite gangs rose in an overwhelmingly Shiite town; up north, Sunni and Shiite factions waged civil war in divided cities like Baghdad and Baquba.
This is exactly the kind of thing that the coalition forces didn’t know before launching the war.
There’s also the little matter of cultural differences between the British and the Americans:
“I have been very frustrated at the British,” said Brig. Gen. Edan Jaber, a police commander in Basra. He said the British “gave a high priority to their own security” and “were not forceful with the cases they faced in the street.”
It is a common criticism. “The Americans go in with huge force and hit hard, not like the British,” one Iraqi soldier complained.
And then there’s the cultural difference between Iraqis and free Westerners—the one you’re not allowed to say in public in the West without being accused of being a neocon or a warmonger. That same Iraqi soldier elaborated on his complaint, and made an observation [e.a.]:
““The Americans go in with huge force and hit hard, not like the British. Our people need a powerful force, not a weak one. We had just left Saddam Hussein behind. How could anyone be soft after that?”
That’s a good question, particularly as it relates to electoral politics in America in 2008, where one (presumptive) candidate consistently appears soft and the other one doesn’t.
