You see, according to them, the killers ran out of targets. The Sunnis are all ethnically cleansed from the mixed neighborhoods and so the killings naturally drop.
There is a smidgen on truth in this explanation. Surely, some of the decrease is due to Sunnis getting the heck out of Dodge. And if this is truly the real explanation, then the Left is implying that this decrease in killing is in fact a permanent decrease and not a lull. If the Sunnis aren't there to be killed, the violence clearly can't resume. War over, eh?
But in fact there are still Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Baghdad. So why aren't the Shia death squads pursuing the Sunnis to drive them from the rest of Baghdad? Hatred should be motivation enough to follow them given that Sunnis from all over the Moslem world have enough hate to travel to iraq to kill Shias.
And the dramatic decline of al Qaeda suicide bombing attacks is explained how?
And are reduced American troop casualties due to a decline in the number of American troops in Iraq?
The Weekly Standard addresses this issue of how some are denying military success by providing fanciful excuses for the decline in civilian casualties:
The decline in violence was attributed to a number of factors, but primarily the fact that, as Gibbs said, "we have defeated al Qaeda in Rashid, and what little that are here, are low level soldiers that are without leadership or supply." He said they'd "taken out all of those leaders," and that he's "not worried about al Qaeda anymore." On the other hand, Gibbs did say that Shia extremists groups were a serious concern. But he qualified that statement by saying even there the violence has been kept to a minimum:
"The people are tired of the violence, and whenever it comes up, they very quickly, within 24-48 hours, tell us who did it, where they're at, and we go in and get them."
These tips are a major contributor to the reduction in violence, he said, but he was quick to point out that just as important was the Coalition's targeting of senior insurgent leaders.
Other "really good news for us," Gibbs said, was that the people of Rashid have "embraced reconciliation." I asked him how he would respond to the charge that any reduction in violence might be attributed to massive ethnic cleansing, which has segregated Baghdad's neighborhoods. His response:
"I dispute that claim that ethnic cleansing is already done. We have lots of mixed areas, we do have some Sunni only areas--and when I say Sunni only I mean 80 percent Sunni, the rest is Shia and others--but we're not seeing any violence in those mixed neighborhoods. And that's attributable to the reconciliation efforts we have ongoing here."
Another theory I bounced off him, which was put forward in a recent issue of Newsweek, was that the Iraqis are merely getting better at hiding the bodies (Iraq's Marlo Stansfields as FP Passport put it). Gibbs's response:
"We have pretty good techniques for finding bodies--and again, dead bodies equal violence, and the people are telling us about the violence when it happens, and we're getting in there very quickly to confirm or deny those reports."
And this posting shows that it is more than just our military operations:
We can all agree that the politicians in Iraq are not stepping up, but ordinary Iraqis certainly are -- with the help of the U.S. military. Here's how the Guardian's Michael Howard in Baghdad describes them:
"Muhammad, a Sunni Arab, and his Shia colleagues in the neighbourhood watch group are determined to reverse the ethnic cleansing. Last month, the group agreed to protect a Sunni mosque in his street from local Shia militias. They have also been mediating between the divided communities either side of the highway."
The reporter explains why this is important: "The result was an understanding: Sunni families would return to their former homes in the heavily Shia areas, while Shia families crossed back into the mainly Sunni streets. The two communities agreed to guarantee the safety of the returnees. Such was the popular backing for the deal that even the local Mahdi army commander had to acquiesce."
And about those unfixable ancient hatreds that so many people said were the root of the problems in Iraq: "'We've been neighbours for 25 years and we feel like brothers,' said Muhammad. 'We will help them to guard and respect their mosques, and they won't harm me or my family'."
The Left used to say that Iraqis were too secular to cooperate with jihadis. Now the Left says the Iraqis are too hopped up on religious differences to stop killing each other. In fact, the killing was instigated by foreigners coming in from outside to fight their war on a new battlefield. Iraqis are still capable of ending violence despite the ample reasons they have to be angry.
Clearly, killings are down because our enemies are knocked back and knocked back hard. Clearly, Iraqis feel secure enough to declare their desire for peace. I don't know if our enemies in Iraq can reverse these separate trends, but these trends are real. Iraq is being depopulated of enemies--not people.
