Iraq 4-Evah

So the latest news out of Iraq is that, if you believe military statistics, attacks have fallen to a February 2006 level. This is down-the-memory-hole-ism at its finest. February 2006 was NOT a good time for Iraq. The country was a mess well before the Samarra Golden Dome bombing late in that month. The sectarian attacks were robust at that time. And the fact that this announcement came on the same day that bombs across Iraq killed 20 people shows you that peace, such as it is in Iraq, is ephemeral.

The real story about Iraq that should let everyone know where a Bush strategy has gotten us is in this prediction from expert Stephen Biddle.

Without getting in to his arguments or my reservations, I just wanted to lay out Biddle's best case scenario as he presented it: if everything goes right and if the US continues to "hit the lottery" with the spread of local ceasefires and none of a dozen different spoilers happens, then a patchwork of local ceasefires between heavily armed, mistrustful communities could possibly hold if and only if the US keeps 80,000-100,000 troops in Iraq for the next twenty to thirty years. And that's the best case scenario of one of the current strategy's smartest supporters. Man.

So I wouldn't be getting all crazy about a couple months worth of numbers, when they haven't meant squat for a political solution and have just put the country completely in the hands of the US military for the next 30 years, which is a completely unsustainable scenario.