Petraeus’ Testimony

I've just read the transcript. My initial reaction is that Gen. Petraeus is by no means rah-rahing modest but encouraging gains in securing Iraq over the last eight months. He noted that civilian casualties, while down, are still too high, and that corruption and incompetence in the ranks of the Iraqi army and police forces have yet to be sufficiently dealt with.

Another threat, even greater than Al Qaeda or homegrown sectarian militias, is the infiltration by Iran's Republican Guard, and by Hezbollah's Department 2800, which is trained by it. We're already "at war" with Iran, in other words, although I still think that the White House's recent move to classify the mullahs' elite cadre as a terrorist organization was a way of distancing one arm of the Islamic state from the state itself. I don't see U.S. bombs dropping on Tehran anytime soon, Justin Raimondo's paranoia to one side. Why do this when a proxy war in Mesopotamia offers a convenient veil of secrecy for our own campaign of infiltration, reconnaissance and armed subversion in Persia?

Perhaps most startling of all in Petraeus' data-heavy presentation was the following. Iraq is spending more on its own security than it is receiving from us; moreover, it's buying the bulk of its materiel from the United States at a rate of $1.6 billion per year. This makes us not just an occupier and steward of the post-Saddam Iraq, but also the chief arms manufacturer for it.

In a way, we should feel proud that we're finally supplying an army and air force to a Middle Eastern country that is at least attempting to constitute a pluralist democratic government. (One reason that a precipitous troop withdrawal would be strategically catastrophic is that any subsequent civil war or bouts of ethnic cleansing would be performed with weapons made in the good old U.S. and A.)

However, we should also be worried about money-for-bombs deal because it means that Russia and China will want to equalize their clientistic arrangements in the region. The only way to do that would be to increase arms sales to Iran and Syria, which Russia and China are likely to do whichever way the wind blows in Iraq.

So even the progress we have made has the potential for failure built right into it.

A final note: I haven't really concerned myself with the pettifogging analysis of various schools of statistics for military and civilian casualties in the war. (Spencer Ackerman and Josh Marshall seem to think that the Associated Press has got the best figures around, while Juan Cole relies on the British organization Iraq Body County.) Assuming, though, that Gen. Petraeus' information is closest to the mark, I have to disagree with Andrew Sullivan that the signs are self-evidently uninspiring. Here is one of the more salient charts used by the general in today's presentation:

Andrew writes:

Another Petraeus graph: showing again that the "surge," the Anbar tribe turn-around and the decision of Shiite militias to hold back while Maliki consolidates Shiite power have reduced the energy of the insurgency to levels of … eighteen months ago. I don't see this as an end to the civil war, just an abatement. If you were worried about the insurgency in 2004, three years later, it is far, far stronger – and the political center has collapsed entirely. The tactical gains of the surge seem to have prevented a slide into an abyss – but not much more can be said at this point. And the announced aim of the surge – political reconciliation – has failed.

To take the last part first, the surge's aim can't be judged until the surge itself is complete, which it won't be until July 2008. (Political reconciliation is the eventual edifice; security is the prerequisite foundation.) Also, consider the raw data represented above: Iraq went from having close to 1,800 monthly attacks against its infrastructure and government facilities in Jan. 2007, at the start of the surge, to having around 1,000 of them this past August. That's more than a fifty percent decrease in eight months.

Round about the time of the Golden Mosque bombing, the starting point of the civil war, there were roughly 600 of these attacks. It therefore requires about a further 40% decrease in the current level of monthly attacks against Iraqi infrastructure and government facilities to bring us back to the pre-civil war level in that violence metric.

If this were achieved, there's every indication, given the above, that similar reductions would occur in the other violence metrics (IED attacks, sniper shootings, etc.). We shouldn't be comparing today's statistics with "18 months ago." The surge is itself an 18 month operation, and we've still got 10 to go.

It's not so implausible that pre-Golden Mosque levels of violence will be restored, even barring further positive developments in political reconciliation. If this does indeed happen, then the surge will have proved eminently worthwhile.

UPDATE: Matt Zeitlin at the good (new?) blog Impetuous Young Whippersnapper takes me to task for my assessment above:

Call me crazy, but I’m bit less sanguine about the idea “that we’re finally supplying an army and air force to a Middle Eastern country that is at least attempting to constitute a pluralist democratic government.” What pluralist central government? The one that where Sunni and Shia both have walked out and the Kurds are merely trying to game it so they can be left alone in Kurdistan? The one where we’re funding Sunni militia who not so long ago were attacking both American troops and the central government? The idea of a military that’s largely infested with Shia militia having airplanes will make things more stable seems a little off base. If anything, we probably shouldn’t be providing essentially secretarian forces with some of the most effective weapons of ethnic cleansing.

I also find it a bit more troubling than Michael that we’re selling Iraq billions of dollars worth of arms. To say the least, this skews the calculus away from withdrawal or for decreasing military support for the central government and army. We now have another constituency positionally stanced against withdrawal or changing our current strategy. And while I’m happy that Michael is concerned about ethnic cleansing being carried out with American weapons, this seems like an argument against giving Sunni tribes money to buy weapons, a key component of the current strategy, as opposed to an argument for our continued presence in Iraq.

First of all, if "both Sunni and Shia" had walked out of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, there would not be a government in charge of an Iraqi Army to buy up all those U.S.-made munitions. As for the Kurds, they've long had the opportunity to completely reject the federalist government centered in Baghdad, rather than dispatch their own political leaders to help people it. It is the Kurds' constitutional right to declare Kurdistan an independent country at a future date. No "gaming" is necessary, as the real test of Kurdish commitment to a unified Iraq will be the referendum on Kirkuk — and its prized oil reserves — later this year. Also, the KRG has repeatedly offered to send peshmerga into central and southern Iraq to help settle the sectarian conflicts there. The offers have been rebuffed, not without some logic, because the fear is that adding Kurdish militia would only increase the sectarian coefficients. Still, this is odd behavior for a tribal minority that is itching to simply take its ball and go home.

The Iraqi Army, unlike the Iraqi police forces, is not quite the hotbed of sectarian infiltration that Matt suggests it is. The army is still under the administrative authority of the coalition, so it's much harder for rogue soldiers to start their own private wars in Iraqi fatigues. The real problem with the army is that it is under-trained and incompetent. Also, the Iraqi air force is still embryonic, as it had to be completely rebuilt. The notion that, among the handful of elite pilots chosen to man new, multi-billion dollar aircraft, a Sadrist or two will sneak in and start carpet-bombing Diyala is quite fanciful.

Matt writes: "To say the least, this skews the calculus away from withdrawal or for decreasing military support for the central government and army. We now have another constituency positionally stanced against withdrawal or changing our current strategy." If I read him right, he means that our funding of Iraq's military keeps our own military presence there indefinitely. I don't see how this is so. We can easily sell arms to Baghdad from the safety of our own borders. Weapons contracting and direct military assistance are two separate things.

As for this: "And while I’m happy that Michael is concerned about ethnic cleansing being carried out with American weapons, this seems like an argument against giving Sunni tribes money to buy weapons, a key component of the current strategy, as opposed to an argument for our continued presence in Iraq." I agree, and it's another reason I'm wary of the dollars-for-bombs arrangement we have with Iraq. At the very least, offering to help the Sunni tribes without arming them (with the hope of eventually disarming them) might be the more prudent course of action.