Today’s Must ReadThe New York Times delivers the first major report on the surge’s progress this morning, a painstaking effort involving statistics and on the ground reports. The verdict?
American casualties are down in Iraq’s provinces, but way up in Baghdad.
Sectarian killings are down, but increased use of car bombs has kept the civilian death toll high — and anyway the beheadings seem to be surging again.
And as the U.S. moves to confront insurgents, the groups seem to be fracturing, making the fight increasingly confusing.
Or as an American private in the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry puts it:
âThe insurgents, they see what weâre doing and we see what theyâre doing. Then we get ahead, then they figure out what weâve done and they get ahead.
âItâs like a game of cat and mouse. Itâs just a really, really smart mouse.â
Now, remember that the whole logic for the surge was to provide stability in Baghdad so that the government could have some breathing room. But as the Times makes clear, there’s nothing mixed about the political progress: there’s been none.
Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr seems to have ended whatever semblance of cooperation he’d offered as the U.S. tried to stabilize Baghdad. Earlier, his Mahdi Army had stood down on his orders as troops entered Sadr City. But there can be no doubt — that time is over.
How better to sum up the situation than this: the Iraqi government was chronically undecided on whether to proclaim April 9th, the day Baghdad fell to the U.S., a national holiday. But, in the end, the holiday was forced on them:
Security remained so tenuous in the capital on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. capture of Baghdad that Iraq’s military declared a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in the capital from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated Monday as a holiday, just a day after it had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.
