New York Times July 30,
2007Op-Ed ContributorA War We
Just Might WinBy MICHAEL E.
O'HANLON and KENNETH M.
POLLACKWashingtonVIEWED from
Iraq, where we just spent
eight days meeting with
American and Iraqi military
and civilian personnel, the
political debate in Washington
is surreal. The Bush
administration has over four
ye
more

New York Times July 30,
2007Op-Ed ContributorA War We
Just Might WinBy MICHAEL E.
O'HANLON and KENNETH M.
POLLACKWashingtonVIEWED from
Iraq, where we just spent
eight days meeting with
American and Iraqi military
and civilian personnel, the
political debate in Washington
is surreal. The Bush
administration has over four
years lost essentially all
credibility. Yet now the
administration's critics, in
part as a result, seem unaware
of the significant changes
taking place.Here is the most
important thing Americans need
to understand: We are finally
getting somewhere in Iraq, at
least in military terms. As
two analysts who have harshly
criticized the Bush
administration's miserable
handling of Iraq, we were
surprised by the gains we saw
and the potential to produce
not necessarily 'victory' but
a sustainable stability that
both we and the Iraqis could
live with.After the
furnace-like heat, the first
thing you notice when you land
in Baghdad is the morale of
our troops. In previous trips
to Iraq we often found
American troops angry and
frustrated â?? many sensed
they had the wrong strategy,
were using the wrong tactics
and were risking their lives
in pursuit of an approach that
could not work.Today, morale
is high. The soldiers and
marines told us they feel that
they now have a superb
commander in Gen. David
Petraeus; they are confident
in his strategy, they see real
results, and they feel now
they have the numbers needed
to make a real
difference.Everywhere, Army
and Marine units were focused
on securing the Iraqi
population, working with Iraqi
security units, creating new
political and economic
arrangements at the local
level and providing basic
services â?? electricity,
fuel, clean water and
sanitation â?? to the people.
Yet in each place, operations
had been appropriately
tailored to the specific needs
of the community. As a result,
civilian fatality rates are
down roughly a third since the
surge began â?? though they
remain very high, underscoring
how much more still needs to
be done.In Ramadi, for
example, we talked with an
outstanding Marine captain
whose company was living in
harmony in a complex with a
(largely Sunni) Iraqi police
company and a (largely Shiite)
Iraqi Army unit. He and his
men had built an Arab-style
living room, where he met with
the local Sunni sheiks â?? all
formerly allies of Al Qaeda
and other jihadist groups â??
who were now competing to
secure his friendship.In
Baghdad's Ghazaliya
neighborhood, which has seen
some of the worst sectarian
combat, we walked a street
slowly coming back to life
with stores and shoppers. The
Sunni residents were unhappy
with the nearby police
checkpoint, where Shiite
officers reportedly abused
them, but they seemed
genuinely happy with the
American soldiers and a mostly
Kurdish Iraqi Army company
patrolling the street. The
local Sunni militia even had
agreed to confine itself to
its compound once the
Americans and Iraqi units
arrived.We traveled to the
northern cities of Tal Afar
and Mosul. This is an
ethnically rich area, with
large numbers of Sunni Arabs,
Kurds and Turkmens. American
troop levels in both cities
now number only in the
hundreds because the Iraqis
have stepped up to the plate.
Reliable police officers man
the checkpoints in the cities,
while Iraqi Army troops cover
the countryside. A local mayor
told us his greatest fear was
an overly rapid American
departure from Iraq. All
across the country, the
dependability of Iraqi
security forces over the long
term remains a major question
mark.But for now, things look
much better than before.
American advisers told us that
many of the corrupt and
sectarian Iraqi commanders who
once infested the force have
been removed. The American
high command assesses that
more than three-quarters of
the Iraqi Army battalion
commanders in Baghdad are now
reliable partners (at least
for as long as American forces
remain in Iraq).In addition,
far more Iraqi units are well
integrated in terms of
ethnicity and religion. The
Iraqi Army's highly effective
Third Infantry Division
started out as overwhelmingly
Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is
45 percent Shiite, 28 percent
Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni
Arab.In the past, few Iraqi
units could do more than
provide a few 'jundis'
(soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi
face on largely American
operations. Today, in only a
few sectors did we find
American commanders
complaining that their Iraqi
formations were useless â??
something that was the rule,
not the exception, on a
previous trip to Iraq in late
2005.The additional American
military formations brought in
as part of the surge, General
Petraeus's determination to
hold areas until they are
truly secure before
redeploying units, and the
increasing competence of the
Iraqis has had another
critical effect: no more
whack-a-mole, with insurgents
popping back up after the
Americans leave.In war,
sometimes it's important to
pick the right adversary, and
in Iraq we seem to have done
so. A major factor in the
sudden change in American
fortunes has been the
outpouring of popular animus
against Al Qaeda and other
Salafist groups, as well as
(to a lesser extent) against
Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi
Army.These groups have tried
to impose Shariah law,
brutalized average Iraqis to
keep them in line, killed
important local leaders and
seized young women to marry
off to their loyalists. The
result has been that in the
last six months Iraqis have
begun to turn on the
extremists and turn to the
Americans for security and
help. The most important and
best-known example of this is
in Anbar Province, which in
less than six months has gone
from the worst part of Iraq to
the best (outside the Kurdish
areas). Today the Sunni sheiks
there are close to crippling
Al Qaeda and its Salafist
allies. Just a few months ago,
American marines were fighting
for every yard of Ramadi; last
week we strolled down its
streets without body
armor.Another surprise was how
well the coalition's new
Embedded Provincial
Reconstruction Teams are
working. Wherever we found a
fully staffed team, we also
found local Iraqi leaders and
businessmen cooperating with
it to revive the local economy
and build new political
structures. Although much more
needs to be done to create
jobs, a new emphasis on
microloans and small-scale
projects was having some
success where the previous aid
programs often built white
elephants.In some places where
we have failed to provide the
civilian manpower to fill out
the reconstruction teams, the
surge has still allowed the
military to fashion its own
advisory groups from
battalion, brigade and
division staffs. We talked to
dozens of military officers
who before the war had known
little about governance or
business but were now ably
immersing themselves in
projects to provide the
average Iraqi with a decent
life.Outside Baghdad, one of
the biggest factors in the
progress so far has been the
efforts to decentralize power
to the provinces and local
governments. But more must be
done. For example, the Iraqi
National Police, which are
controlled by the Interior
Ministry, remain mostly a
disaster. In response, many
towns and neighborhoods are
standing up local police
forces, which generally prove
more effective, less corrupt
and less sectarian. The
coalition has to force the
warlords in Baghdad to allow
the creation of neutral
security forces beyond their
control.In the end, the
situation in Iraq remains
grave. In particular, we still
face huge hurdles on the
political front. Iraqi
politicians of all stripes
continue to dawdle and
maneuver for position against
one another when major steps
towards reconciliation â?? or
at least accommodation â?? are
needed. This cannot continue
indefinitely. Otherwise, once
we begin to downsize,
important communities may not
feel committed to the status
quo, and Iraqi security forces
may splinter along ethnic and
religious lines.How much
longer should American troops
keep fighting and dying to
build a new Iraq while Iraqi
leaders fail to do their part?
And how much longer can we
wear down our forces in this
mission? These haunting
questions underscore the
reality that the surge cannot
go on forever. But there is
enough good happening on the
battlefields of Iraq today
that Congress should plan on
sustaining the effort at least
into 2008.Michael E. O'Hanlon
is a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution. Kenneth
M. Pollack is the director of
research at the Saban Center
for Middle East Policy at
Brookings.

Category News & Politics

Tags Iraq, New, York, Times, A, War, We, Just, Might, Win