Michael Schwartz has periodically produced assessments of the occupation of Iraq for TomDispatch. It is now a month since Bush gave his speech announcing the “new” “surge” strategy, and the escalation was actually initiated the day before, in an offensive on Baghdad’s Haifa Street. So it is already possible to assess the results of the surge policy, and Schwartz does that in a new piece.
The results are the same as they were with earlier offensives: an increase in sectarian violence, as militias are prevented from policing areas under their control; and residents fleeing their neighborhoods. Only now there are two new developments: heavier use of air power, and the Shia-dominated Iraq army ethnically cleansing Sunnis from Sunni neighborhoods.
Baghdad Surges into Hell: First Results from the President’s Offensive
Even before the Americans arrived on Haifa Street in January as the vanguard of the new Bush strategy to pacify Baghdad, previous experience strongly suggested that the effort was doomed to failure. A month later, that expectation has certainly been fulfilled.
Unfortunately, there are some genuinely new, grim elements to the battle for Haifa Street; elements that threaten to make the coming Baghdad-wide “surge” dramatically more damaging than its predecessors. To begin with, there is the far greater application of American airpower; bombing runs and high caliber assaults from helicopter gunships have dramatically increased the death and destructiveness of the still ongoing battle, rendering much of Haifa Street an unlivable graveyard.
Added to this is the systematic and largely successful effort of the Sunni jihadists to expel the Shia minority from the area, an effort triggered by the initial American incursions. And then, overlaid on top of the cleansing of the Shia minority, came the contrary cleansing of the Sunni majority; engineered by the Iraqi military that arrived in the neighborhood with the Americans, and conducted their own purge with the support or acquiescence of the U.S. military.
The Haifa Street battle sadly shows that Bush’s new strategy will measurably increase the violence in Baghdad above already intolerable levels. With more troops at their disposal, American generals will try to pacify many more neighborhoods like Haifa Street and cities like Tal Afar that need “to be brought back under Iraqi security control.” And when they do this, they will bring the same mix of horror that they brought to Haifa Street, including brutal air power, house-to-house searches and fighting, sectarian violence, massive dislocation, and ethnic cleansing.
Like the other campaigns initiated by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, this new strategy will make things measurably worse.
In the poll below, note that I do not include the question of whether Dems will be able to stop the surge. The surge has already started, even if troop levels are increasing slowly.
Well, it appears that people at BT are pessimistic about our congressional Dems doing anything effective to stop the Iraq war. So far, four out of six have voted that the Dems will do nothing effective to stop the war while Bush is in office. (Trying to create an optimistic mood, I voted for the possibility that the Dems would be able to force some kind of deescalation.)
If this opinion is representative, I think the progressive blogosphere should start becoming more aggressive toward our Dem leadership.
How about this for a meme: Either you start making a serious effort to stop this war, or we will abandon you, either by switching to the Greens, or by starting a new party altogether.
If my admittedly poor knowledge of U.S. history serves me right, every time that the U.S. was faced with a major moral challenge, it was able to move forward only through the formation of a new, values-based party.
I’m just wondering if the Dems in the House will have the chutzpah to do something about the war (like not funding the surge) in an effort to force the Senate to hold debate on the Iraq war. And what about war with Iran? If Bush just starts a war without asking congress (it certanly appears that he’s trying to make a case for it merely being an outgrowth of the current war that he already got permission for), will they stand up and do something about it?
Publicly stating that impeachment was off the table was a dumb move for the Dems, IMO. It only emboldened our own terrorists, the ones that currently occupy the White House.
I agree that was a dumb move.
With regard to attacking Iran, Washington elites are really worried: maybe they will get Congress to do something.
I agree it certainly looks like they’re setting Iran up so that they can claim they can attack it on the basis of the Iraq war resolution.
A problem with impeachment is the press. So far, even when there are hearings, they give them little or no coverage. If the hearings got decent coverage, public outrage would increase, forcing the Dems to put impeachment back on the table.
And the polling organizations are refusing to do a poll on impeachment: it’s very possible that over half the public favors impeachment by now.