One reader is guardedly optimistic:
Just this weekend I had a very interesting conversation with a grad school friend of mine who recently came back from 12 months working in the US Embassy in Baghdad. This guy studied insurgency extensively for years before shipping out, so I trust much of what he says.
My friend believes the surge has a chance of working. He asserts that most of the violence in Baghdad is happening in a relatively small area of the city, such that an extra 20,000 has a real chance to solidify control.
He told me something very important about the nature of the sectarian violence, which is that being Sunni is only one of a number of ‘profiles’ used by Shi’ite militiamen to select targets for torture and execution. They believe that they are being selective in going after ‘terrorists.’ While he (and I) believe that profiling is highly inaccurate, it does suggest that improvements in government control needn’t necessarily lead to genocide of the Sunni population. According to my friend, the presence of American forces is essential, because it acts as a constraint on the militiamen, forcing them to be more careful, more selective, and less violent overall.
My personal objection to this analysis is that Baghdad is simply the tip of the iceberg. There is no doubt in my mind that consolidation of control in Baghdad will lead Sunni insurgents to shift location to less densely occupied areas. What then?
Indeed: what then? But we need to hope for success for Petraeus even if we don’t expect much. Wars are dynamic things.
The Dish 