Don't relax from this news:
The monthly death toll in Iraq dropped by nearly a third to 659 last month, the U.N. said Sunday, but a recent spike in the number of bullet-riddled bodies found on the street has raised fears the country is facing a return to all-out warfare between Sunni and Shiite factions.
Shia death squads appear to be directly fighting back against Sunnis in response to al Qaeda killings of Shias with a renewed bombing campaign. This naturally reduces Sunni efforts to kill Shias. For now. If this keeps up, the extremists in both camps will ramp up the killing campaign and casualties will again spike.
Given our errors in allowing Syria to fester as a breeding ground for al Qaeda that bleeds back into Iraq, our retreat before Iranian power that allows Iran to keep the war in Syria going and which increases Iran's ability to support Shia death squads in Iraq, and the ultimate mistake of walking away from Iraq, recovering will be difficult.
But we should make the effort. I know opponents of the Iraq War don't like to admit it, but we did win that war. We defeated Saddam's military and his insurgents. We defeated Iran's Shia allies. We defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. We defeated every enemy we faced in battle and set up a competent Iraqi military that just needed our support to keep winning. And we set up a real--if weak--democracy that needed our support to deepen.
All that is at risk. We've taken small steps, it seems, to bolster Iraq's counter-al Qaeda efforts. But I don't know if it is enough given the various pressures on Iraq's government. Overly confident that they could complete the victories without us, the Iraqis at least seem to realize they do need us. But I can't see President Obama wanting to do anything visible that indicates a reversal of "responsibly ending" a war that continues to rage and which could explode again.
You'd think that we might at least get the Iraqi government to let us use drone strikes against al Qaeda in Iraq. But perhaps our reintroduction of CIA assistance to Iraq is laying the groundwork for that effort.
Or maybe Iraqi ground and air assets are good enough if there is good intelligence that our drones add nothing of value. That's quite possible, too.
But I do hope we are willing to fight to defend our victory in Iraq. Optimist that I am, maybe the president will make more of an effort after the 2014 mid-term elections when he no longer needs to explain himself to his most leftish supporters.
We'll see if the sectarian hatred in Iraq can wait for our intervention to be more politically convenient.
