Progress in Iraq

Juan Cole is spot-on with this:

President Bush in his speech on Thursday maintained that it was a good thing that about half of Ninevah province voted in the referendum on the new constitution. The Washington Post points out that Ninevah voted overwhelming against the constitution, and came within an hair's breadth of helping defeat it altogether. This was a good thing? WaPo also points out that Bush instanced security progress in Najaf and Mosul as good news. But this is perverse. There was not much a security problem in Najaf until, in early April 2004, the US military suddently declared that it wanted to "kill or capture" Shiite religious nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr. The latter launched an uprising in the course of which the Mahdi Army took over Najaf. Bush provoked that. As for Mosul, it was quiet under Gen. Petraeus, unti Bush launched the Fallujah campaign of November, 2004, at which time security in Mosul collapsed. The local population was furious about the attack on Sunni Arabs. Mosul is still not back to being fairly safe.

When we cause a city to fall into chaos, and then they pull themselves out of it, we didn't help bring progress to that city. 'Kay? Meanwhile, even heavily fortified Baghdad appears to be increasingly insecure in recent days, owing to the upcoming elections, but also a sad reminder that progress in Iraq is slow, tenuous, and forever on the verge of collapse, particularly in the absence of any semblance of leadership or strategy.