Behind the Anbar Myth

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II14Ak04.html">This article repudiates all of the latest "surge" propaganda. Excerpt from the article:

"Petraeus' key argument this week to prove his steering of the Bush-devised "surge" was a "success" was to spin the close collaboration between the occupation and the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government in Baghdad on the one side with Sunni tribal leaders in al-Anbar province on the other. Petraeus framed it as if this "sustainable" solution was a huge counterinsurgency success of his own making. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The success story in Anbar is not due to the general's wily ways, but to an Iraqi sheikh: Abdul Satter Abu Risha, the leader of a coalition of tribes, including 200 sheikhs, formed in the autumn of 2006 under the name Anbar Sovereignty Council (now it's called Iraq Awakening)."

Note that this "sheikh Abdul Satter Abu Risha" http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=11615">was just assassinated yesterday.

and at least one subsequently getting mowed down.

Whichever segment of the insurgency, whether it was Al Queda or Iraqi insurgents or aspects of both, settled on the suicide/car bomb campaign against civilians had to know that it was a high risk strategy. It has been extremely effective as a resistance strategy in terms of effectively reducing whatever support there was for the American occupation, by creating chaos and proving that the occupiers could not control it. It also intimidated much of the population, caused the flight of much of the middle and educated class, prevented much economic recovery and settled sectarian scores.

On the other hand, they had to know that they ran the risk of losing popular support in the long run, if they had to continue to target civilians indiscriminately rather than the occupation forces.

I wonder if Petraeus' occupation strategy is partly to prolong the occupation, not matter how unwelcome or counterproductive, long enough to give those who target civilians with car bombs more time to alienate the populace. If the resistance was targeting the occupation force alone, our troops' morale would suffer and the populace would more enthusiastically support the resistance. Instead they continue to include the "chaos causing" attacks on civilians among their tactics, which probably have more to do with the changes Iraqis attitudes in Anbar and a few other places than anything that the Americans have directly accomplished.