Successful War? Hardly
Mark Davis is frothing at the mouth in an op/ed column in The Dallas Morning News. Barack Obama's hugely successful trip to Afghanistan and Iraq has Davis seeing red. He's livid that Barack Obama doesn't see "the surge" as an end in itself, that decreasing violence without political reconciliation is not success, that continued distraction from the central front on the war in terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not an altogether good thing. "The surge" has been more successful as a political tool for McCain than it's been helpful to America in the real war on terror.
Mark Davis doesn't mention other events that have led to a reduction in violence in Iraq. He doesn't mention the goals of the surge, which was the political reconciliation that hasn't happened. He doesn't mention the deterioration of conditions in Afghanistan, which is where the real front in the war on terror is. Iraq has always been a sideshow. He doesn't mention McCain's support from the beginning in getting America bogged down in that sideshow.
The ethnic cleansing of Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods had run its course in 2007. Millions of Iraqis, the targets of the ethnic violence, have become refugees in Syria or Jordan. Today, Baghdad is no longer an integrated city, but is a collection of walled compounds, some Sunni, some Shiite. In 2006, the United States began to buy off the Sunni tribal leaders, paying them to turn their guns against al Qaeda instead of US forces. The major Shiite militias declared a ceasefire at about the same time. All these factors played a part to reduce the violence. Certainly, the surge helped. That's good. But political reconciliation is still a mirage. Iraq is still an unstable country where violence is still an everyday fear. US troop levels are no lower than they were before the surge. And al Qaeda is growing stronger, not weaker, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as in 2001 when al Qaeda was plotting its attacks on America.
Against that dismal backdrop, Barack Obama goes to the region and reiterates his intention to end the American involvement in the war in Iraq and refocus America on the war on terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In a huge success, Obama draws backing for his strategy from none other than the democratically-elected Iraqi government America nourished and pins its hopes on. This drives Mark Davis rabid. He describes Obama's trip as shameful and galling and insulting. He even denies the reality of the words of support from Iraqi's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Mark Davis is "blind by choice." Barack Obama sees clearly. It's Mark Davis who has lost sight of the goal of the war on terror, of America's strategic interest, and who has become emotionally invested in a religious civil war in Iraq and in the politicians responsible for the debacle. To quote Davis, "I could gag."
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