Notes on the War in Iraq: Where things stand as of November 2007

This is the ninth in a series. The bulleted points below are culled from many sources. They are compiled to show how much information on an issue is available to those who are seeking it.

  • Opponents say the war’s proponents seek to sustain the illusion that Iraq is central to the war on terrorism. They might want to consult with Islamic terrorists on this matter. After all, it is Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (the top two leaders of al Qaeda) who have declared Iraq to be precisely that.
  • In his 2005 letter to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Zawahiri wrote, “[Iraq] is now the place for place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era… The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate… The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.”
  • “This Third World War is raging” in Iraq, Osama bin Laden has said. In his words, “The whole world is watching this war” — and it will end in “victory and glory, or misery and humiliation.”
  • The war in Iraq is now a major front in the global war to combat al-Qaeda and is critical to the outcome of U.S. efforts to contain Iran. At the same time, Iraq is the site of a bloody insurgency that threatens to explode into a full-blown civil war.
  • The U.S. has much at stake in this conflict, and a pullout now would bring grave consequences: massive sectarian violence, a humanitarian disaster, and the creation of a failed state that would serve as a springboard for radical Islamic forces to destabilize neighboring states and launch terrorist attacks against a wide variety of targets, possibly including some inside the United States.
  • Is the U.S. capable of winning the war in Iraq, and what does winning look like? Yes, the war in Iraq can be won. Winning would be helping Iraqis build a stable government that is an ally in the war on terrorism—unlike Saddam’s Iraq, which was an enemy in that war. This would be a major victory. It is true that Iraq will be a violent place for many years. But some of the forces that make it violent—radical Islamists and Saddam’s Baathist supporters—are sworn enemies of the United States. If we turn our backs on them now, their threat will only grow.
  • What is taking place is not a full-fledged civil war, though al-Qaeda seeks to provoke a civil war. The current conflict is a struggle for power between an elected government and many different organizations that seek to impose their totalitarian views on others through violence.
  • A fundamental struggle is being fought on Iraqi soil between those who believe that Iraqis, after a long nightmare, can retrieve their dignity and freedom, and others who think that oppression is the order of things and that Iraqis are doomed to a political culture of terror, prisons and mass graves. Some of Iraq’s neighbors have made this struggle more lethal still, they have placed their bets on the forces of terror in pursuit of their own interests.
  • The U.S. is now being challenged militarily in Iraq by both al-Qaeda and Iran. Does anyone really believe it is not in the U.S. interest to win these battles? Does anyone honestly think it would not be a significant defeat for the U.S. to be driven from Iraq by al-Qaeda suicide car-bombers and militias armed, trained and directed by Iran?
  • We’re winning because the Iraqis want us to – and the war in Iraq was always going to be won by the Iraqis, and so it has proven. But the Iraqis who have won it are on our side.
  • Violence continues in Iraq, but it is mostly local: revenge cycles, factionalism, crime, brutal neighborhood power plays. And it is declining. Iraqi civilian deaths in September 2007, like U.S. military deaths, had halved since their highs earlier this year. By December they will be much lower.
  • Meanwhile reconciliation, which will never be complete, is happening. We saw, with the huge success of the two 2005 elections and the week-long nationwide celebrations attending the soccer victory this July, that deep unities have survived the 35-year Baath nightmare. The Kurds and Shiites can be forgiven for not wanting to reward the Sunnis immediately for the destructive insurgency that followed those 35 years of apartheid and genocide.
  • But from the local level to the national, the huge majority of Iraqis are showing enormous tolerance.
  • The biggest unifier of all currently might be the most predictable one. Help from foreigners is welcome in Iraq. The country’s elected prime minister, possessing after Iraq’s heroic elections more popular legitimacy than almost any leader in the world, often points out that the Coalition is there as invited guests.
  • Thousands of Americans and their allies have died helping to give Iraqis this opportunity. We have shown enormous skill and bravery in helping them fight their enemies, and immeasurable goodwill in sending our young men to protect Iraqi schools, mosques and polling booths.
  • Iraqis also fight the battle for their security, losing policemen and soldiers to the violence, as do the multinational forces. The reason we and Iraqis are winning this war together is that its purpose is to give Iraqis what they want.
  • Ahead lies a difficult road–the imperative of national reconciliation, the drafting of a new social contract that acknowledges the diversity of Iraq. The current Iraqi constitution made provisions for amending it.
  • Iraqis are training and equipping a modern force, a truly national and neutral force, aided by allies. This is against the stream of history here, where the armed forces have traditionally been drawn into political conflicts and struggles. There has been an increase in the numbers of those who volunteer for the Iraqi armed forces, and many see this as proof of the desire by Iraqis to win stability and success for their national government.
  • The key to a long-term military victory in Iraq that would facilitate the eventual drawing down of U.S. troops is the development of Iraqi security forces that can gradually take responsibility for defending the Iraqi people from insurgent attacks and defeating the insurgency. The United States must help the Iraqi government to build effective, well-trained, and well-equipped military and police forces capable of assuming a progressively larger share of the security burden.
  • While critics are right that improved security has not yet translated into sufficient political progress at the national level, the increased presence of our soldiers is having a seismic effect on Iraq’s politics at the local level.
  • In the neighborhoods and villages where U.S. forces have moved in, extremists have been marginalized, and moderates empowered.
  • Thanks to this changed security calculus, the Sunni Arab community–which was largely synonymous with the insurgency a year ago–has been turning against al Qaeda from the bottom-up, and beginning to negotiate an accommodation with the emerging political order.
  • Sustaining this political shift depends on staying the offensive against al Qaeda–which in turn depends on not stripping Gen. Petraeus of the manpower he and his commanders say they need.
  • We must also recognize that the choice we face in Iraq is not between the current Iraqi government and a perfect Iraqi government. Rather, it is a choice between a young, imperfect, struggling democracy that we have helped midwife into existence, and the fanatical, al Qaeda suicide bombers and Iranian-sponsored terrorists who are trying to destroy it.
  • The impatience with the progress of the Democratic government in Iraq is an exercise in forgetting history on a massive scale. Few nations are able reach a workable and balanced governing structure quickly. Every civilized country on the face of the earth has a rich history of trial and error, violence, bloodshed, and terrible times. It’s not surprising that a nation with the history of Iraq’s will have all the more difficult a road to travel.
  • What would be the reaction of the United States if the kind of violence we’re witnessing in Iraq were taking place in any other nation which has expressed at the voting booth that they desire to live in a democratic society? Would we or other western countries provide the necessary help to secure stability or would we let that nation fall?
  • Reconstruction and economic progress have come relatively quickly in postwar Iraq compared to postwar Germany and Japan, and this is despite continued insurgent attacks on Iraq’s infrastructure and economic targets. Unemployment remains high, estimated by the government at 28 percent, but U.S. policy did not create that unemployment. Private investment, bolstered with capital remitted from family members abroad, has fueled rapid growth in the private sector.
  • George Bush recently declared that we are at war with “Islamic fascism.” Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive.
  • Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember what al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.
  • Terrorism is obviously derived from the ideology that drives it. And so the fact of the matter is that we’re not at war with terrorism, which is a tactic, but we’re at war with the ideology that fuels the terrorism.

Where things stand in late 2007

  • Iraq is a still a major front in the war against Islamic extremists because the premise of the Bush Administration was correct. The development of an ally in the Mideast is exactly what the extremists don’t want and are trying desperately to prevent.
  • Our enemies are making our point. If Iraq would’ve been pacified quickly, the left would’ve said there never was a threat.
  • Today, it is not clear that most Iraqis want to slaughter other Iraqis and return Iraq to despotism. But a fanatical and ruthless minority does.
  • A plurality of Iraqis still prefer the chaotic and dangerous present to the sure methodical slaughter of their recent Saddamite past.
  • Despite some violent opposition, a growing number of the 15 million eligible voters have chosen to participate in the political process.
  • An elected government remains in power, under a constitution far more liberal than any other in the Arab Middle East.
  • In the region at large, Libya, following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, gave up its advanced arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
  • Events on the ground in Iraq have improved with the Petraeus led “surge” strategy, but because of Republican Party message malfeasance, public opinion polls show that the basics still must covered on why we fight in Iraq.