"Winning" the War

So, a new Newsweek article shows the reality belying the lunatic unreality of the Bush administration's argument that the "surge" is working. Here's a taste:

It was their last stand. Kamal and a handful of his neighbors were hunkered down on the roof of a dun-colored house in southwest Baghdad two weeks ago as bullets zinged overhead. In the streets below, fighters from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fanned out and blasted away with AK-47s and PKC heavy machine guns. Kamal is a chubby 44-year-old with two young sons, and he and his friends, all Sunnis, had been fighting similar battles against Shiite militiamen in the Amel neighborhood for months. They jumped awkwardly from rooftop to rooftop, returning fire. Within minutes, however, dozens of uniformed Iraqi policemen poured into the street to support the militiamen. Kamal ditched his AK on a rooftop and snuck away through nearby alleys. He left Amel the next day... [emphasis added]

See, whatever Bush says about reduced violence (and bear in mind that thousands of Iraqis are still dying every month), it doesn't mean a thing so long as the government is also involved in the sectarian bloodletting. I.e., so long as "Iraqi policemen" are helping Shiite militiamen in their on-going pogrom against Sunnis, so long as al-Maliki and other politicians are supported by and beholden to such militias, things are just not going to turn out well. It wouldn't matter how many troops America sends - it will all be for naught if the Shiites and Sunnis (and let's not forget the Kurds) can't produce a united government between them.

So, can they? Well, so far, not so good, if the stories of people like Kamal and thousands of others are to count for anything in this debate (which, y'know, they probably ought to). And unfortunately, regardless of any slight decrease in violence that may be occurring for now, there has been no indication that the sectarian divisions show any signs of healing, which, alas, is not too surprising - people tend to hold grudges against people they perceive to be responsible for murdering their family members, stealing their land, destroying their businesses, etc., etc.

Accordingly, one has to wonder about the wisdom (duh) of Bush's stubborn "srategeries" for Iraq.

Of course, don't put it past the administration to eventually employ a deeply cynical definition of victory, which the article hints at here:

When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won.

Yes, someday all the Sunnis may be purged from Shiite areas, and all the Shiites from Sunni areas, and members of both groups may all be driven from the Kurdish north. And hey, maybe then, after thousands have been killed, and millions driven from their homes - after, that is, Iraq has been torn into three along sectarian and ethnic lines - maybe things will be relatively peaceful. Maybe there just won't be any killing left to do. And maybe that, in the end, is how Bush and his cronies will find a way of "winning" the war.