In Iraq, the Momentary Good News and the Depressingly, Lastingly Bad

As any watchful pessimist knows, every silver lining has a cloud. And the "good news" emerging from Iraq's internal rumblings is just such a case of "Brace yourself."

This morning the New York Times laid on thickly what's right with Baghdad these days -- probably to the right's everlasting chagrin, since, as it reminds us daily, the Times doesn't do such things. In a boffo tribute to snapshot reporting, veteran Iraq journalists Damien Cave and Alissa Rubin explain the hopeful here and now in "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves," a headline whose positive mood pretty much blankets the story.

"The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real," says the Times, after noting, as one example, the "cooking by a sunlit window" performed by one repatriated wife and mother. "Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says."

For Americans at home, no matter how virulently anti-Iraq war they may be, the easing tensions and bloodshed in Baghdad are welcome news. Any respite from the daily slaughter that defined the city just a few months ago is a definite good, no matter how it was achieved, or who achieved it. No Iraq family deserves, and no American family delights in, the bloody mayhem and displacements ignited by a wrongheaded "liberation."

Yet -- and here come the clouds -- the good news is almost certainly temporary. And, extending the above point made on Americans' partisan differences, despite what right-wing pro-warrers might think, that doleful prospect is as depressing for the antiwar crowd as it is for them. Again, no one relishes the human fallout of a brutal civil war; but ethnic, sectarian and geopolitical realities on the ground in Iraq are still realities -- and they remain every bit as potentially brutal. The antiwar bloc just isn't as blind to them.

The Times only briefly suggested that optimism should be dispensed with a huge grain of caution. "Iraqis are clearly surprised and relieved to see commerce and movement finally increase, five months after an extra 30,000 American troops arrived in the country. But" -- and this is the huge part -- "the depth and sustainability of the changes remain open to question."

With that, the Times returned to the glowing reporting on the U.S. occupation's success. Maybe the paper is just tired of the bleakness and wanted its own respite. I don't know. But what wasn't reported looms far larger than what was.

The obstacles confronting a lastingly peaceful Baghdad are staggering in their dimensions, not to mention the surrounding country. They're also far too numerous to confine in the space of 900 words or so. Upon considering just a few, however, those silver linings begin to fade into the clouds.

For starters, the relative peace was U.S. imposed, and the required escalation is about to reverse. That's not a choice, unless one believes in the felicity of Hobson's choices. The troops simply aren't available. And as Shiite-dominated Iraqi troops and police forces take up the manpower slack, woe to those Sunni neighborhoods that have come to rely on impartial peacekeeping.

As well, Shiite militias could once again become an important player in Shiite protection, as increasingly disgruntled Sunnis retaliate against the revisited impartiality. More broadly, if anyone thinks 1400 years of sectarian divide and violence are slated to wither away after a few months of imposed peace, he's yet to read one history of the conflict, let alone a selection.

Then, of course, we have the separatist-terrorist situation in the north brewing and bubbling, which the Turks won't tolerate forever and will likely spark a regional war, thereby ripping apart the rather fine threads now holding Iraq together. And let's not forget the Bush administration's bete noir and magnificent obsession to the east, which is already pulling so many strings in Iraq, to local Sunnis' displeasure.

Back to Baghdad, the Times notes that only "about 20,000 Iraqis have gone back to their Baghdad homes, a fraction of ... the 1.4 million people in Baghdad who are still internally displaced." A broader local repatriation will only stir the cinders, making today's more peaceful metropolis a more likely battleground in the future.

In addition, one can't and shouldn't believe all the "good news" coming out of Iraq regarding the virtual elimination of the Sunni insurgency and its al-Qaeda pockets. We've been doused pretty thoroughly lately with this Pentagon flummery, but this morning comes a revealing passage in a Washington Post report: "U.S. military commanders say that insurgents across the country are increasingly motivated more by money than ideology and that a growing number of insurgent cells, struggling to pay recruits, are turning to gangster-style racketeering operations."

We can tak-tsk all we want about the tactics employed and motivations behind them, but those six little words -- a growing number of insurgent cells -- belie the happy and hopeful reports about the spent Sunni insurgency.

One could go on, of course, and almost without end. The dozens upon hundreds of factors working against any lasting peace in Baghdad and throughout are, as I said, staggering in their consequences. But for Americans, the only authentic good news will be that announcing the last troop to leave Iraq.

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... to support p m carpenter's commentary -- and thank you!

Comments

[Jon Jost]

"U.S. military commanders say that insurgents across the country are increasingly motivated more by money than ideology and that a growing number of insurgent cells, struggling to pay recruits, are turning to gangster-style racketeering operations."

Yes, and just what are a lot of the US military doing in Iraq, what with $20,000 and $30,000 inducements to join up, re-up, etc. For the money and not pure patriotism. Tsk tsk. And what is the US doing there at all, certainly nothing about black gold or anything....

[epppie]

The relative peace is welcome, but the troops should be home. That's what should be happening. Also, i don't trust any info out of the military. The picture seems to be one less of actual peace than of the US paying off the poeple who were attacking it, and turning a blind eye to the violence they are perpetrating in their areas of influence.

Thank God our soldiers are dying in lesser numbers. Now lets get them home.