This admission of the primacy of non-military means is not an admission of defeat. It is the reality of the fight we are in.
Which is why I don't see the number of enemy attacks as a proper metric for judging whether we are winning the war. Violence is a metric of insurgency intensity, but even a dying star burns more brightly before the end. And this is also why I am disturbed that the level of violence in Baghdad may be considered the metric for judging the surge's success.
When I look at the war, I see the enemy held back by our military shield while we've built up the government to fight the threat. The government--insurgent/terrorist balance has swung decisively in favor of the government. As any war drags on, each side can objectively get stronger as they pull in additional resources. If the relative strength is shifting, growing strength of either side viewed in isolation is irrelevant to the question of the balance and winning or losing.
Our military shield has kept the enemy from growing stronger at a rate faster than the Iraqi government has grown more powerful. And I honestly don't know if the enemy is objectively stronger now than in 2004. They kill more, but that is not a metric of their strength. When American Marines were dying in large numbers on Okinawa in 1945, did that mean Japan was stronger then than in 1941? Clearly not.
Recall the scare of spring 2004 when half the Iraqi security forces dissolved in the twin jihadi-Sadr uprisings. Recall the handover of sovereignty in the summer of 2004 when nobody knew if the shaky interim government would hold together. Recall how in that summer we didn't even know if we could count on the loyalty of Shias still suspicious of us after we abandoned them in their 1991 uprising against Saddam.
And then look at the Iraqi government now, which in the face of higher levels of violence appears to be taking tough decisions to rein in enemies of the government. Look at the Shia-dominated security forces that are holding together and fighting the enemy, dying and not breaking. These Iraqi security forces are not up to American standards, but they are certainly better than Saddam's army which managed to hold Iraq together under a minority Sunni regime.
Look at the Kurds who fight for Iraq and have not broken away from Iraq.
Consider that we don't even consider that the Sunnis--either jihadi or Baathist--can win. We worry about Shias seduced by Sadr and Iran. And even here Sadr does not command anywhere near a majority of support among Shias, and his popularity may have peaked two years ago.
Various enemies still fight, but they are on the losing end of the shifting power balance and will eventually be defeated barring some traumatic event that erases the government advantage. That could be a Sadr coup, an Iranian invasion, or a too-abrupt or total American withdrawal of troops and support. Or the government could survive and defeat those threats and still go on to win. Or never face them at all.
Yet General Petraeus must certainly know the true value of military force and other government assets, since he literally wrote the book on counter-insurgency. Unless you wipe out the enemy population by killing or expelling them, force alone does not win the war for you however necessary it is as a shield. Depriving the enemy of popular support (and by "popular" I mean not a majority of the population but sufficient support within their minority power base of Sunni Arabs) will starve them of supplies, recruits, intelligence, and safe havens.
So I am comforted by his views recently expressed:
He said that "any student of history recognizes there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency in Iraq."
"Military action is necessary to help improve security ... but it is not sufficient," Petraeus said. "A political resolution of various differences ... of various senses that people do not have a stake in the successes of Iraq and so forth — that is crucial. That is what will determine, in the long run, the success of this effort.
U.S. officials, including Petraeus' predecessor Gen. George W. Casey Jr., have long expressed the opinion that no military solution to the Iraq crisis was possible without a political agreement among all the ethnic and religious factions — including some Sunni insurgents.
And remember that "political resolution" should not mean reversing the results of the war. It should not mean coalition government with Baathists or jihadis with blood on their hands. The Baathists are defeated and their Sunni Apartheid regime is over.
Political resolution means that the bulk of the Sunnis and even of the Baathists can surrender (though it would not be called a surrender) and live freely in a democratic Iraq, taking part peacefully in the country's future without legal impediments to their success.
