The Iowa Markets poll shows a Bush break-out as well. I guess Harris and Pew are off. Slate’s summary is helpful.
WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ?: Belmont Club looks on the bright side: they don’t seem to buy the Newsweek argument that the insurgency is reaching a new level of sophistication. And they argue that the U.S. casualties are concentrated in a few places within the Sunni triangle. And so the status quo endures. I sure hope they’re right – and the security collapse in the Green Zone, trouble in the north, Zarqawi’s continued strength and the remaining threat from far-from-disarmed Sadrist militias is not as grave as we might expect. It is indeed very hard to figure out what is happening. But it also seems to me that military deaths may not be the best way to analyze this. After all, the White House may well have been withdrawing troops from sensitive areas in order to minimize casualties in the run-up to elections (perhaps prior to an attack on Fallujah in November?). And the major recent target of the insurgents has been the Iraqi civilian population. Do we have monthly figures for their deaths? Given last week, when over 130 were murdered in a few days, it’s not unreasonable to assume that things are getting worse. We sure know that almost no reconstruction aid has been disbursed – a full year and a half after liberation. If that isn’t incompetence, what is? Sid has gotten some relatively senior military guys to wring their hands. And I keep reading newspaper stories detailing how Iraqis have responded to new terror attacks by blaming the Americans. I hope Belmont Club is right; and all this other stuff is misinformation. But they haven’t convinced me yet.
ZEYAD WEIGHS IN: Meanwhile, my old reliable, Zeyad, is not sounding too optimistic. He views the rounds of violence as semi-coordinated, a fore-runner of a future power-struggle or civil war:
The most likely scenario in the event of a premature withdrawal of occupation forces is this: Sadr will move to gain control of the south and most of Baghdad, other Shi’ites will submit by intimidation. The Marji’iya will have no power to intervene unless they are willing to allow a violent civil war between the various Shi’ite factions. Iran is likely to interfere, but perhaps not directly.
At the same time, Sunni elements will move to consolidate their power over their areas. The fundamental foreign and Salafi constituent would be too weak to control any area. Each town would be virtually independent until the strongest (and most ruthless) group can control the Sunni areas north of Baghdad. The Kurdish region would break off the rest of Iraq and the Peshmerga would move to control oil fields in Kirkuk. Later, there would be a bloody confrontation between the different groups until one subjugates the others and controls the country, this would probably take years and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would die, many more would try to leave Iraq.
With this bleak scenario in mind, one can easily interpret the current pattern of violence. I am not saying this is going to happen soon, I’m only trying to understand how the various groups are thinking and how it reflects on their current actions. Of course, I may be wrong, but I am inclined to believe that this explains it. Each group wants to survive the occupation to fight for power in the future.
This, of course, indicates that the key is to insist that we are not leaving any time soon – which is obviously not what the election of John Kerry would achieve. It may be that the only way out of this mess is to stick with the man who helped make it. I have a feeling that that is what many people are now reluctantly concluding.
A ROAD FROM HELL: And if you feel like reading some harrowing reporting from the scene, try this.
The Dish 