“It’s never as bad as it was, and it’s not as good as it’s being reported now.”

So says Army Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, one of the highest ranking officers currently in Iraq. And who can blame him?

One thing often missed — not always, but often — is that nobody with any sense of humanity is rooting for failure in Iraq. One dead victim is one too many; there have been thousands upon thousands now. Wanting those numbers to increase to prove a point is a grotesquerie — but those supporting the war grasp on to this conceit with an almost feral reaction, saying that all opposing it adhere to this idea, that somehow we’re wanting nothing more than a river of blood, ruined lives and multiple tragedies just to make the current president look bad. I am not going to answer for the sins of people who in fact do think like that, no more than, I hope, those opposed to my general viewpoints feel like they have to answer for those characters who have all but openly wished for another attack and thousands dead in the US to ‘wake us out of our complacency,’ or language similar to that. At a certain point the annoyingly cartoonish becomes the fully contemptible, no matter what your beliefs.

So the fact that the level of overt violence is decreasing in Iraq is a very good thing, period. No qualifiers are necessary. What is necessary, though, is to keep that quote above in mind, and remember these points that are addressed in the article:

• The surge, however defined, is not and cannot be permanent. Budget, staffing, rotation, political desire — all these are factors. The big cheer has been that the surge is making everything nice and rosy, and nobody could be blamed for feeling a lot better on that front if you’re a war supporter. Barbero’s words should best be kept in mind, though, because the whole point is not that everything’s been fixed, but that the situation is simply improving — nothing more — and again, is not permanent at all, in fact has a clear end date. The story can’t put it any plainer:
  

  The latest news of declining violence comes as the U.S. troop contingent in Iraq has reached an all-time high. This week, the U.S. troop number will hit 175,000 — the largest presence so far in the 4 1/2 -year war — as units that are rotating in and out overlap briefly. But those numbers are scheduled to come down rapidly over the next several months, which will place an increasing burden on Iraqi security forces and an Iraqi government that has yet to demonstrate it is up to the challenge, senior military officials said.

• The military higher-ups are angry at the Iraqi government, the State Department is angry at the military. A perfect storm of suck, to understate. Balloon Juice summed up the feeling as “New Phase – Blame the Victim.” To quote from the Washington Post again:
  

  Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, complained last week that Iraqi politicians appear out of touch with everyday citizens. “The ministers, they don’t get out,” he said. “They don’t know what the hell is going on on the ground.” Campbell noted approvingly that Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the top Iraqi commander in the Baghdad security offensive, lately has begun escorting cabinet officials involved in health, housing, oil and other issues out of the Green Zone to show them, as Campbell put it, “Hey, I got the security, bring in the [expletive] essential services.”

  Indeed, some U.S. Army officers now talk more sympathetically about former insurgents than they do about their ostensible allies in the Shiite-led central government. “It is painful, very painful,” dealing with the obstructionism of Iraqi officials, said Army Lt. Col. Mark Fetter. As for the Sunni fighters who for years bombed and shot U.S. soldiers and now want to join the police, Fetter shrugged. “They have got to eat,” he said over lunch in the 1st Cavalry Division’s mess hall here. “There are so many we’ve detained and interrogated, they did what they did for money.”

  That second paragraph should be a clear warning sign to anyone thinking that this is all turning into a cozy and civic-minded replication of a city hall election campaign about whether the dogcatchers should wear white or black uniforms. Possibilities exist, not guarantees, and I make no bones about feeling those possibilities lean much more towards the improbable. The last few years should have made that clear to everyone, frankly.

  And the State Department?:

  On the diplomatic side of the Iraq equation, U.S. officials said they realize time is short. “We’ve got six months because the military is leaving,” said one official. But this official and others expressed irritation with the military’s negativity toward the Iraqi government — which they interpret as blaming the State Department for not speeding reconciliation.

  “That’s their out,” the official said of the military. “It’s convenient, and I know plenty of them have been helping that story around.”

  Diplomatic officials, none of whom were authorized to speak on the record, insisted that progress is being made, even if it lags behind military successes.

  Not exactly inspiring, and when you combine it with the open revolt of State Department employees about serving in Iraq (I sympathize with them on a human level but, no less so than the military, they are government employees assigned to serve at the discretion and desire of the government, and they knew that going in; it will be interesting to see what the final conclusion is), even more problematic.

• Elections? What elections? To quote the final three paragraphs of the story:
  

  The answer to many of Iraq’s problems, several military officials said, would be to hold provincial elections, which they said would inject new blood into Iraq’s political life and also better link the Baghdad government to the people. The question under debate is whether to hold them sooner, while the U.S. military still has available its five “surge” brigades, or hold them later and let Iraqis enjoy their growing sense of safety — even though a smaller U.S. military would have less flexibility. “Some areas, you need them right now, to get people into the government,” said Campbell. “But the other side of me says, let it settle in, let security develop, let people see some services.” Later rather than sooner is especially appealing because the election campaigns are expected to turn violent.

  But the longer provincial balloting is put off, the more likely the current political stalemate will continue. Also, if elections are postponed until, say, the fall of next year, they will be held on the eve of a U.S. presidential vote in which the Iraq war promises to be a major issue, military planners here note.

  So, how to force political change in Iraq without destabilizing the country further? “I pity the guy who has to reconcile that tension,” said Lt. Col. Douglas Ollivant, the chief of planning for U.S. military operations in Baghdad, whose tour of duty ends next month.

  I emphasize that one line in particular because, if this is an accurate reflection of current military thinking about said elections, that means they’re expecting things to go wrong, messily. Not necessarily catastrophically. But again, any further death is one too many, and those who have to fight are already figuring it’s going to happen to one extent or another. Combine that with the timetables mentioned — and, speaking coldly but clearly, the ineluctable pressure that the Bush administration will feel from the GOP to deliver on Iraq somehow before next November’s vote, as the part I quote indicates but does not fully spell out — and things are all the more questionable.

To conclude where I began — these are hundreds of thousands of lives being talked about, millions. This is moving into the final phases of an effort carried out by an administration who even its defenders concede has spent far too much time acting in amateurish fashion — anyone arguing otherwise has been blind. Most of us in the world have nothing to offer or to do about it other than to sit, watch, comment and wait.

I can only hope for the best. I am not sanguine.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance