Kinsely-- too bad you aren't around more. I think you comprise about 80% of Slate's aggregate brain power (although, nothing written in this rag has proved as memorable to me as Emily Yoffe's ode to her sphincter.) I say, more essays from you and more sphincter from Emily, and you got yourself an e-rag that deserves attention.
But it seems to me that, whether its a weakness or part of your particular genius, you leave the actual truth unstated. You paint a picture in which the truth is a big black sillouette in the middle of other people's bullshit. Like when Jerry Garcia used to play around all the notes to a particular Dead song in between tunes as a signal to the band to start it.
In this case, the color in that sillouette is simply bribery and surrender. It's not the number of US troops on the ground. Those numbers will never be a fraction of what would be necessary to impose order on our putative colony. It's the number of Iraqis who are engaged in political violence that must be adjusted.
The recent declines in violence are the result of our having surrendered, in essence, in our fight to root out non-fundamentalist Sunnis, and agreeing to bribe them off as members of their respective "Awakening Councils." You have to hand it to the Sunni strategists-- they play both Al Qaeda and the US like tin whistles, using the former to ratchet up the sense of chaos and using the latter to finance their real struggle against Shia militias and Shia dominated state security forces.
Of course, this situation is one of rapidly diminishing returns. The underlying political agendas of the various insurgent and Shia militia groups have not fundamentally changed. Perhaps with the Kurd part of the equation, now that they've pissed off the Shia and the Turks, but as between the Sunnis and the SCIRI Shia and Sadre Shia? Just a temporarly abeyance of violence while they catch their breaths, and manuever in the "legitimate" political sphere.
Once the Sadrists, either wholesale or as a result of an internal revolt, start actively defending themselves from the Badres and the Sunnis, violence will go right back up. Perhaps not in the same manner. Iraq is no longer a country with mixed sect communities-- ethnic cleansing has been essentially accomplished. So, roaming death squads probably won't come back except withing warring Shia neighborhoods. But full out firefights and market bombings will surge soon enough.
I suspect that the timing will align with the US eleciton. Currently, the US is hemoraghing money to keep the Sunnis and Shia quiet for the duration of McCain's campaign. Once Obama is elected (or McCain beats Hillary), BushCo's interests will invert and they will attempt to foster chaos in Iraq in order to tie the next president's hands with regard to pulling out.
Do you want a quick and easy way to distinguish between a thoughtful strategist talking about Iraq and a shithead blowhard? The blowhard talks about the surge like it's a real strategy that's had a real effect. Simple.
