Chuck Schumer believed in 2007 that Iraq would be off the table in 2008 because Bush would withdraw troops after the surge failed. He's wrong about the former, but he might not be wrong about the surge failing. This is a very bad sign.
"The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans," said one Mahdi Army militiaman, who was reached by telephone in Sadr City. This same man, when interviewed in January, had stated that he was abiding by the cease-fire and that he was keeping busy running his cellular phone store.
Sadr City residents say they saw fighting Tuesday between Mahdi militiamen and US and Iraqi forces in several parts of the district. One eyewitness, in the adjacent neighborhood of Baghdad Jadida, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw a heavy militia presence on the streets, with two fighters planting roadside bombs on a main thoroughfare.
Firedoglake and Ilan Goldenberg have more, and Crooks and Liars has video of CNN's reporting. The surge, which is not that relevant to our political choices here at home, was always a tactical question. There were many reasons why violence dropped in Iraq, and increased American troop presence was probably one of them. I think we're about to see how significant some of the other factors were.
And yet, the fact that Sadr's possible decision to abrogate a cease fire with American troops is important to our national security only reinforces the point that, surge or nor surge, we letting local warlords bind our hands. When putting together the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, the authors recognized the reality that there is no military solution in Iraq, and that political, economic, and diplomatic tools need to be deployed to deal with our national security in a smart way. Violence increased in Iraq because of a political breakdown, which only reinforces the rationale for the plan. It's funny how big fancy think tanks like Brookings missed this fact, but candidates, voters, and activists got it right once again. I can't help but hope that the ridiculous conversation we've been having for months about the surge will shift onto more productive terrain, so that we are asking the question of how to make American safe going forward with regards to our policies in Iraq.
When Petraeus testifies once again in April, this should be first and foremost in the discussion.
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