The Price of the Surge..

This article has an interesting analysis of the effect of the surge that goes counter to the conventional view that the surge is working or at least that it will work in the long run. As recent violence has shown there is still no accomodation among different factions even competing Shiite factions. The U.S. buying off of some Sunni insurgents to fight Al Qaeda was never sanctioned by the Maliki government and the resulting "militia" are not being assimilated into the Iraqi forces.


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The Price of the Surge
How U.S. Strategy Is Hastening Iraq's Demise
Steven Simon
From Foreign Affairs, May / June 2008


STEVEN SIMON is Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern
Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1994 to 1999, he
served on the National Security Council in positions including Senior
Director for Transnational Threats.

In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new approach to
the war in Iraq. At the time, sectarian and insurgent violence
appeared to be spiraling out of control, and Democrats in Washington
-- newly in control of both houses of Congress -- were demanding that
the administration start winding down the war. Bush knew he needed to
change course, but he refused to, as he put it, "give up the goal of
winning." So rather than acquiesce to calls for withdrawal, he
decided to ramp up U.S. efforts. With a "surge" in troops, a new
emphasis on counterinsurgency strategy, and new commanders overseeing
that strategy, Bush declared, the deteriorating situation could be
turned around. More than a year on, a growing conventional wisdom
holds that the surge has paid off handsomely. U.S. casualties are
down significantly from their peak in mid-2007, the level of violence
in Iraq is lower than at any point since 2005, and Baghdad seems the
safest it has been since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime five
years ago. Some backers of the surge even argue that the Iraqi civil
war is over and that victory on Washington's terms is in sight -- so
long as the United States has the will to see its current efforts
through to their conclusion. Unfortunately, such claims misconstrue
the causes of the recent fall in violence and, more important, ignore
a fatal flaw in the strategy. The surge has changed the situation not
by itself but only in conjunction with several other developments:
the grim successes of ethnic cleansing, the tactical quiescence of
the Shiite militias, and a series of deals between U.S. forces and
Sunni tribes that constitute a new bottom-up approach to pacifying
Iraq. The problem is that this strategy to reduce violence is not
linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state. If
anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by stoking the
revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them against
the central government and against one another. In other words, the
recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term
goal of a stable, unitary Iraq. Despite the current lull in violence,
Washington needs to shift from a unilateral bottom-up surge strategy
to a policy that promotes, rather than undermines, Iraq's cohesion.
That means establishing an effective multilateral process to spur top-
down political reconciliation among the major Iraqi factions. And
that, in turn, means stating firmly and clearly that most U.S. forces
will be withdrawn from Iraq within two or three years. Otherwise, a
strategy adopted for near-term advantage by a frustrated
administration will only increase the likelihood of long-term debacle.

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