Battlefield: Iraq

Strategypage notes trends in Iraq that indicate we are winning.

Sunnis increasingly concluding they have lost. Allying with al Qaeda just tainted them. And the Shias and Kurds have successfully built security forces that cannot be beaten. Contrary to Sunni assumptions, American will to fight was good enough to shield the new Iraqi government while it built up. And unlike their propaganda, American forces have been lethal on the ground and have smashed up the Sunnis and foreign jihadis in battle. Plus, Sunnis are getting tired of being poor and are worried that they are being left behind as Iraq as a whole--and especially the Shia and Kurd areas--forge ahead economically.

With our casualties going down month after month, the pressure on our forces to pull out too soon will decline. And I've read for a while now that al Qaeda has decided Iraq is a losing front and is transferring emphasis back to Afghanistan.

It should not be too long before Iraqi casualties decline, too, as only the remnant jihadis and Baathists with no place to go continue to fight. When those former Baathists funding the insurgency decide that they'd rather keep the money they have and retire to a safe haven with nice pools and authorities who don't ask questions rather than spend it on a fight that even they can't deny is lost, it could be a rapid decline.

And then the fight against the criminals that are a large part of the violence in Iraq will be targetted.

The big question for me is what Iran will do. Iran sees that we are winning in Iraq. Iran retains influence with some Shia militias inside Iraq, including the idiot Sadr. With American and even Western European attention turning to Iran, the Iranians may well decide that to buy the time they need to go nuclear they will need to counter-attack more openly inside Iraq. Will the Iranians order the Shia militias to rise up?

And do the Iranian mullahs see Iraqi democracy as a threat to their rule? Or do they believe they will use Shia Islam to pull the strings in Iraq? Do they think that Iranians have no use for democracy even if it succeeds in Iraq? That is, is a democratic Iraq a threat to Iran's mullahs even aside from the nuclear question? Will this alone lead Iran to escalate in Iraq?

And if they do, will the Iraqi government hold up against this threat? Will American public opinion hold up against an apparent defeat? We held up well against the April 2004 jihadi-Sadr revolt but can we again? Will this be the Battle of the Bulge offensive that we stop and in the process crush the enemy's last assets? Or Tet when the American public concludes we've lost?

And for Iran, is rolling the dice wise? Could they buy the time to go nuclear without this risky move? Or will an Iranian defeat in an open stab at our position in Iraq simply give us the excuse to hammer Iran rather than stop us by tying us down?

We are winning in Iraq. But outside factors may yet intervene to threaten what we've accomplished so far.

And of course, even if we pass this looming test, the task of breaking long habits of corruption and tribalism in Iraq will test us. But others since World War II deemed by the experts to be incapable of democracy--Latin Americans, Spanish, Asians, and East Europeans--have built democracies. Not to mention the Japanese and Germans who lacked real democracy before we imposed it.

Trends are good. No doubt. And they have been for quite some time even though our press has failed to recognize this. To be fair, fighting has continued because our enemies did not decide to quit even though they were losing. Saying we have been winning could seem stupid to assert if you only looked at the headlines without examining the bigger trends. Indeed, polling on Iraq shows that it has been very easy to conclude we are not winning. But we have been. I've gone blue in the fingertips blogging on this for close to two years now. The only time I had my doubts about the trends was in April and May 2004. But I didn't panic and we endured the enemy's shot and recovered. Now we are moving toward victory.

But let's not get cocky. A trend is not victory. Don't let good trends lull us into thinking some hard times cannot happen. Iran may still want a say in whether we win inside Iraq.