why do you 2 persist in hating america? don't you want the ponies everyone will get when we win the "TWAT" (The War Against Terror, -ism, ists, et al, ad nauseum)?!?
wait?! there's going to be ponies!
Maybe the ponies are all in Afghanistan where this week Coalition fatalities reached a new annual high, the fourth consecutive year to show an increase...and it's likely the same story with much more numerous Afghan casualties.
Still who cares? As far as I can see the mission remains ill-defined (although from a British point of view growing) and no politicians in The U.S. or U.K.have anything much to say beyond staying the (uncharted) course.
Watch as all of the assumptions of the Bush administration turn out to be wrong. Who knew?
I'm not sure about that absent civil war. Seems to me it's been underway ever since the bombing of the temple at Samarra. If not some time before.
But AQI, now .... ahh, those guys are going to leave Iraq one of two ways: vertically or horizontally. Staying, however, is NOT an option for them. Not if they enjoy breathing.
See David Kilcullen's recent piece in Small Wars Journal for a good idea of just what sort of self-destructive assholes these people really are.
Read this excerpt and marvel: our main enemies in the Middle East are actually as arrogant and stupid as we are, which is really saying something -
AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation (tha’r) on his people, who attacked AQI. The terrorists retaliated with immense brutality, killing the children of a prominent sheikh in a particularly gruesome manner, witnesses told us. This was the last straw, they said, and the tribes rose up. Neighboring clans joined the fight, which escalated as AQI (who had generally worn out their welcome through high-handedness) tried to crush the revolt through more atrocities. Soon the uprising took off, spreading along kinship lines through Anbar and into neighboring provinces.
Other tribesmen told me women weren’t the only issue. The tribes run smuggling, import/export and construction businesses which AQI shut down, took over, or disrupted through violent disturbances that were “bad for business”. Another factor was the belief, widespread among the tribes (and with at least some basis in fact) that AQI has links to, and has received funding and support from, Iran. In their view, women were simply the spark – AQI already “had it coming”. (Out in the wild western desert, things often tend to play out like The Sopranos… except that AQI changed the rules of the game by adding roadside bombs, beheadings, murder of children and death by torture. Eventually, enough was enough for the locals.)
Once we are out of the picture, no longer distracting Iraqi attention from the other people that they hate, AQI is going to last about as long as a six-pack at a frat party.
Following the old saying that there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics," the Bushite Junta has been able to cite "progress" where ther's been none. It's all bunk, but it keeps the drooling masses happy.
Oh, I don't know about this:
It's all bunk, but it keeps the drooling masses happy.
The "drooling masses" seem to be pretty pissed off, actually. Even if the tone-deaf press isn't reflecting that fact so much, it's still true that the majority of our citizenry is angry and getting angrier. Who actually believes anything that comes out of Centcom or the Oval Office anymore? (Outside the 24% True Believurrs, the answer is "Nobody!", of course.)
hmmmmm, now why didn't I read about this in the Washington Post?
oh yeah, they were too busy sliming Gore after he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
nice work fellas, keep up the good reporting. I think there should be a gnb weekly updated on the violence in baghdad.
Thanks
This is an impressive site, which Juan Cole has linked this morning, without approval. I'll definitely be back.
Be careful about quoting Kilcullen. I saw him on a BookTV panel yesterday, and while in many ways he was more sensible by several magnitudes of order than most of what we've heard in the past four years, he nevertheless had to insist that Iraq had a sovereign government, at which point the Iraqi politician on the stage was polite enough not to laugh outloud, but shredded that thesis nonetheless. Part of our problem has always been that our strategy is dictated more by what's necessary to shore up US political support for another week or two rather than what might actually make sense in Iraq. Ultimately, you have to drink that Kool-Aid, or you can't work for this administration.
It's obviously difficult to figure out what the hell is going on over there, even for people who are there. My own effort to connect the dots suggests there is a class element in the mix which is largely ignored. AQI appealed to lower class Sunnis long cut out of the Baathist and local tribal power structures, and the "Awakening" is largely a matter of those traditional powers deciding to put the trailer trash back in its place. They could afford to do this because they decided the foreign foe was basically beaten, surge or no surge, though they're happy to take whatever money we'll throw at them on our way out the door. Boiled down, we're paying protection money. On that point, Kilcullen's Sopranos analogy makes sense.
Kilcullen is one of the most fascinating figures of the Iraq War.
Here is an analysis of Kilcullen's latest reports on the war (with a link to Kilcullen's slides).
http://www.defense-and-
society.o...ong_war_VII.htm
It's published at DNI, a free online journal about military and geo-political issues.
OK. I haven't had time to go through the number sin detail, but I am curious:
1) I take it the second graph refers to Iraqis killed/ province?
2)I presume you compiled this yourself, as the link to icasualties.org merely refers to 'coalition' casualties?
The actual situation in Iraq is impossible to determine from reading American Newspapers but I would hazard a guess is that the Sunnis realize that they now have to hold out past January 2009. Sunni leaders have given up reclaiming control of Iraq for now. Plus, the Shieks are willing to use anybody including the Marines to halt futher Sunni ethenic cleansing.
For the next year and half expect more of the same, pot shots and IEDs until American troops leave. Then all hell will break loose once American Airpower leaves the theater. History keeps replaying variations of the same theme.
The first graph is just a straight display of the number of coalition military personnel killed in each province over the course of the war, broken down by month.
The second graph is the same data, but we decided to group the Baghdad, Salah ad Din, Babil and Diyala provinces.
There is no month by month breakdown of civilian casualties that is reliable, as the Iraqi and US governments refuse to track those numbers or release them if they do track them.
The justification for the grouping is based on the fact that there have been three basic hotspots of violence over the course of the war: Basra region, Baghdad region, and Anbar. A fourth region could be interpreted in the Najaf/Karbalah/Qadisiyah area.
Those provinces also fall into broadly religious categories: Primarily Shi'ia in the South, Primarily Sunni in Anbar, and mixed in the Baghdad region.
Your graphs show the numbers of coalition military casualties, right? Well, obviously coalition military casualties drop when the coalition military leaves an area. Violence against coalition military forces has dropped in the areas from which coalition military forces have withdrawn; that's obvious. However, you seem to be drawing the conclusion that violence in general has decreased in these areas. This conclusion may be true, or it may not, but you have not cited any data to support it.
Your data graphs would be more complete with a total KIA count line and accompanying trend-line.
With this ommission the wing-nuts then start expounding on their ignorance by menacious misrepresentations about overlooked data, i.e. they'll make up lies that total KIA is down.
It's always nice to have a complete analysis to shove down the throats of this cowardly bunch of ignoramuses.
What Will said.
Your claim is that "The violence is not dropping. Its ending. It's ending wherever we withdraw from and spiking were we are digging in. It only appears to drop because violence in Al Anbar, Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Wasit, Dhiqar, etc, etc, has ended."
And it turns out that you're not talking about Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence - which is the impression you give - but rather Iraqi-on-American-troop violence.
Well, of course that drops to zero in any area we pull out of. Fucking duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
:headdesk:
What we are talking about is that it is being widely reported that violence in Iraq is down and that we 'cant pull out' because we cant leave iraq to the terrorists.
and Iraqi on Iraqi violence falls off also. although not charted here, we looked at Iraqi dead.
Looks good to me! Time to declare victory and leave. Bring the troops home to a ticker tape parade in Times Square.
Petraeus sez things are getting better and 'the numbers' are down.
Reports are AQI is nearly defeated in Iraq.
But it's a catch-22 for Bush and his sycophants who don't want us to leave Iraq, but rather,want us to accept a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq (never mind what the Iraqis think).
So it's a balancing act between "thing are going good in Iraq so STFU you commie libruls!" and "we can't leave yet 'cause if we do it'll be a blood bath"
It's a fine line to walk but the Commander Guy manages.
"What we are talking about is that it is being widely reported that violence in Iraq is down and that we 'cant pull out' because we cant leave iraq to the terrorists.
and Iraqi on Iraqi violence falls off also. although not charted here, we looked at Iraqi dead." -- Hubris Sonic
OK. Please could you provide evidence to support your assertion that Iraqi deaths decline when US troops leave an area. This surely is quite an important finding and merits significant discussion. However, I have yet to see any direct evidence that this is the case.
That said, I'm certainly open to this possibility.
It's worth bearing in mind the following:
1) The study published in the Lancet last autumn suggests that the occupying forces were responsible for at least 26% of all deaths during the year 2006. Iraqi Body Count suggests that this proportion is closer to 6% (as I recall when I last looked at their data). This suggests that media figures underestimate the neagative effects of US/UK/ Polish etc. troops in Iraq. This must be taken in to account when assessing whether or not their presence is, on balance, beneficial.
2.Some studies have indicated that media reported deaths may well decline when violence increases (there was an article on Zmag about this, maybe a week ago in their Iraq section). Thus, a drop in media reported deaths doesn't necessarily amount to a drop in actual deaths.
3.Baghdad has gone from about 60% Shi'ite, to 75% Shi'ite over the course of the surge. Thus, it may be expected that there would be a corresponding drop in sectarian killings and thus, the drop in killings may not largely be a product of the surge.
4. The drop in killings reported for September seems to co-incide with Moqtada Al Sadr's call for the Mehdi army to stand down for six months. Perhaps this has resulted in a drop in killings.
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