Answers a few questions, no?



The Surge Succeeds
By J.R. Dunn
God looks after children, drunkards, and the United States of America
- Otto von Bismarck

It's now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with by domestic opponents of the Iraq war.

They're going to be ignored.

They're being ignored now. Virtually no media source or Democratic politician (and not a few Republicans, led by Richard "I can always backtrack" Lugar) is willing to admit that the situation on the ground has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be overwhelming drawbacks.

Anbar is close to being secured, thanks to the long-ridiculed strategy of recruiting local sheiks. A capsule history of war coverage could be put together from stories on this topic alone - beginning with sneers, moving on to "evidence" that it would never work, to the puzzled pieces of the past few months admitting that something was happening, and finally the recent stories expressing concern that the central government might be "offended" by the attention being paid former Sunni rebels. (Try to find another story in the legacy media worrying about the feelings of the Iraqi government.) What you will not find is any mention of the easily-grasped fact that Anbar acts as a blueprint for the rest of the country. If the process works there, it will work elsewhere. If it works in other areas, that means the destruction of the Jihadis in detail.

Nor is that all. Diyala province, promoted in media as the "new Al-Queda stronghold" appears to have become a death-trap. The Jihadis can neither defend it nor abandon it. The Coalition understood that Diyala was where the Jihadis would flee when the heat came down in Baghdad, and they were ready for them. A major element of surge strategy - and one reason why the extra infantry brigades were needed - is to pressure Jihadis constantly in all their sanctuaries, allowing them no time to rest or regroup.

A blizzard of operations is occurring throughout central Iraq under the overall code-name Phantom Thunder, the largest operation since the original invasion. It is open-ended, and will continue as long as necessary. Current ancillary operations include Arrowhead Ripper, which is securing the city of Baqubah in Diyala province. Operation Alljah is methodically clearing out every last neighborhood in Fallujah. In Babil province, southeast of Baghdad, operations Marne Torch and Commando Eagle are underway. (As this was being written, yet another spinoff operation, Marne Avalanche, began in Northern Babil.)

The Coalition has left the treadmill in which one step of progress seemed to unavoidably lead to two steps back. It requires some time to discover the proper strategy in any war. A cursory glance at 1943 would have given the impression of disaster. Kasserine, in which the German Wehrmacht nearly split Allied forces in Tunisia and sent American GIs running. Tarawa, where over 1,600 U.S. Marines died on a sunny afternoon thanks to U.S. Navy overconfidence. Salerno, where the Allied landing force was very nearly pushed back into the sea. But all these incidents, as bitter as they may have been, were necessary to develop the proper techniques that led to the triumphs of 1944 and 1945.

Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq's 1943. It appears that Gen. David Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible. Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they cannot match ("Getting inside their decision cycle", as the 4th generation warfare school would call it), leaving them harried, uncertain, and apt to make mistakes.

The surge is more of a refinement than a novelty. Earlier Coalition efforts were not in error as much as they were incomplete. American troops would clean out an area, turn it over to an Iraqi unit, and depart. The Jihadis would then push out the unseasoned Iraqis and return to business. This occurred in Fallujah, Tall Afar, and endless times in Ramadi.

Now U.S. troops are remaining on site, which reassures the locals and encourages cooperation. The Jihadis broke (and more than likely never knew) the cardinal rule of insurgency warfare, that of being a good guest. As Mao put it, "The revolutionary must be as a fish among the water of the peasantry." The Jihadis have been lampreys to the Iraqi people. Proselytizing, forcing adaptation of their reactionary creed, engaging in torture, kidnapping, and looting. Arabic culture is one in which open dealings, personal loyalty, and honor are at a premium. Violate any of them, and there is no way back. The Jihadis violated them all. The towns and cities of Iraq are no longer sanctuaries.

The results have begun to come in. On July 4, Khaled al-Mashhadani, the most senior Iraqi in Al-Queda, was captured in Mosul. On July 14, Abu Jurah, a senior Al-Queda leader in the area south of Baghdad, was killed in a coordinated strike by artillery, helicopters, and fighter-bombers. These blows to the leadership are the direct outgrowth of Jihadi brutality and the new confidence among the Iraqis in what they have begun to call the "al-Ameriki tribe".

We will see more of this in the weeks ahead. The Jihadis have come up with no effective counterstrategy, and the old methods have begun to lose mana. The last massive truck-bomb attack occurred not in Baghdad, but in a small Diyala village that defied Al-Queda. An insurgency in the position of using its major weapons to punish noncombatants is not in a winning situation.

You will look long and hard to find any of this in the legacy media. Apart from a handful of exceptions (such as John F. Burns of the New York Times), it's simply not being covered. Those operational names would come across as bizarre to the average reader, the gains they have made impossible to fit into the worldview that has been peddled unceasingly by the dead tree fraternity. What the media is concentrating on - and will to continue to concentrate on, in defiance of sense, protest, and logic, to the bitter end - is peripheral stories such as the Democrat's Senate pajama party, reassertions of the claim that the war has "helped" Al-Queda, and the latest proclamation from the world's greatest fence-sitter.

The situation as it stands is very close to that of the final phase of Vietnam. Having for several years confused that country's triple-layer jungle with the rolling plains of northwest Europe, William Westmoreland in 1968 turned over command to Creighton Abrams. Though also a veteran of the advance against Germany (he had been Patton's favorite armored commander), Abrams lacked his predecessor's taste for vast (not to mention futile) multi-unit sweeps. After carrying out a careful analysis, Abrams reworked Allied strategy to embody the counterinsurgency program advocated by Marine general Victor Krulak and civilian advisor John Paul Vann.

Abram's war was one of small units moving deep into enemy territory, running down enemy forces and then calling in massive American firepower in the form of artillery or fighter-bombers for the final kill.(Anyone wishing for a detailed portrayal of this style of operations should pick up David Hackworth's Steel My Soldiers' Hearts. It will surprise no one to learn that Hackworth claims that the strategy was his idea and that he had to fight the entire U.S. military establishment to see it through, but it's a good read all the same.) This was a strategy that played to American strengths, one that went after the enemy where he lived. By 1970, Abrams had chased the bulk of the Vietnamese communists across the border into Cambodia and Laos.

But Vietnam also had its ruling narrative, one that had no room for successful combat operations. That narrative had been born in 1968, at the time of the Tet offensive. Tet was a nationwide operation intended by North Vietnamese commander Nguyen Vo Giap to encourage the Vietnamese people to join with the Viet Cong and PAVN in overthrowing the government. It was an utter rout, with the communists losing something in the order of 60,000 men. The Viet Cong were crippled as a military force, and never did recover.

But panicky reporters, many of whom had never set foot on a battlefield (not to mention figures at ease with manipulating the facts, such as Peter Arnett), were badly shaken by the opening moves of the offensive, among them an abortive attack on the U.S. embassy grounds at Saigon. Their reportage, broadcast and printed nationwide, portrayed a miserable defeat for the U.S. and its allies, with the Viet Cong and PAVN striking where they pleased and making off at their leisure. The media portrait of a beleaguered American war effort was never corrected, and became the consensus view. (This process was analyzed in detail in Peter Braestrup's Big Story, one of the most crucial -- and overlooked -- media studies ever to see print.) After Tet, there could be no victories.

The success of the Abrams strategy was buried for twenty years and more, as the myth of utter U.S. defeat was put in concrete by "experts" such as Stanley Karnow, Frances FitzGerald, and Neil Sheehan. Only with the appearance of revisionist works such as Lewis Sorley's A Better War and Mark Moyar's Triumph Forsaken has the record begun to be set straight.

That was how it was played at the close of the Vietnam War. That's how it's being played today.

And what do they want, exactly? What is the purpose of playing so fast and loose with the public safety, national security, and human lives both American and foreign?

Generally, when someone repeats a formula, it's because they want to repeat a result. And that's what the American left wants in this case. During the mid-70s, American liberals held political control to an extent they had not experienced since the heyday of FDR. The GOP was disgraced and demoralized. The Democrats held the Senate, the House, and the presidency. There was absolutely nothing standing in the way of their maintaining complete power for as long as anyone could foresee... until Jimmy Carter's incompetence proved itself, which caused the whole shabby and illusory structure to fell apart in a welter of ineptitude and childishness.

The American left wants a return to the 1970s -- without Jimmy Carter. (Okay, without disco, either.) They want a cowed GOP. They want control of the institutions and the branches. They want a miserable, defeated country they can manipulate. And they want it all under the gaze not of the Saint of Plains, but of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who can assure that left-wing predominance will continue for a generation or more.

Will they get it? That's a question worth some thought. Because as it stands, neither of the program's necessary elements is coming to fruition. The war is not being lost, and their great political scandal has fizzled.

The other half of the equation was Watergate. Vietnam would not have been anywhere near as much a disaster without it. Watergate paralyzed the Nixon administration. It turned Nixon himself from an odd, unlikable, but incredibly capable politician to a half-crazed ghost sobbing in the Oval office in the middle of the night. It transformed his last great triumph -- the Paris peace accords that ended the war on an acceptable standoff -- into ashes. The left wing of the Democratic Party, shepherded by people like George McGovern and Mark Hatfield, proceeded to undercut the settlement as quickly as they could manage. Two separate appropriations acts passed in June 1973 cut off all further aid to the countries of Southeast Asia. (A third such act passed in August 1974 has gained more attention but it only duplicated the effects of the first two.) From that point on it was a matter of time. Nixon resigned a little over a year later. Less than a year after that, in April 1975, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell.

(The price tag for this, which liberals don't care to bring up, was over 2 million dead in Cambodia, 165,000 dead in Vietnam, another 200,000 plus drowned and murdered on the high seas during the exodus of the boat people. Laotian numbers can only be estimated but must have been in the thousands. The price of Indochinese "peace" was nearly twice that of the war itself.)

And that, in case you were wondering, is what Plamegate was about. The Democrats needed a scandal - and not merely a run-of-the-mill, everyday scandal, but a mega-scandal, a hyper-scandal, something that would utterly cripple the administration and leave it open to destruction in detail. The targets were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, held by the MoveOn crowd to be the actual brains behind Adolf W. Chimp. When nothing at all could be dug up on the administration principals, the scandal was effectively over. Knocking off a vice-presidential aide might cause excitement within the Beltway, but nobody in the real world could be expected to care. It may be a bitter thought to I. Lewis Libby that he was taken down through sheer proximity, like a bystander during a drive-by shooting, but it was in the very best of causes. Libby's sacrifice not only saved the administration, it may well save tens of thousands of Middle Eastern lives in the years to come. (This also explains why the President was so circumspect in dealing with the investigation - he knew exactly what the opposition was up to, and could afford to give them no ammunition whatsoever.)

Plamegate ended last Thursday with a judge throwing Plame's suit out of court on strictly technical grounds. (This is something of a disappointment - I would really have liked to see what that pair of hustlers would do when cross-examined by a competent defense attorney.) People like John Conyers are trying to create a conflagration by blowing on the embers of the attorney firings and the vice-presidential subpoenas. To no avail. Scandals, like forest fires, occur only when conditions are perfect. Through their failed efforts, the liberals have in effect set a backfire, surrounding the administration with wide barriers of burned-over ground. The Democrats themselves have rendered Bush unassailable, and all the slumber parties, the empty votes, and the rhetoric are intended to camouflage that fact. Bush will have hard days yet, but he will not be Nixonized. He will be able to fight his war as he sees fit.

That means a continuation of the surge, and of the strategy of General Petreaus. Will that be enough? It's impossible to say. But the past few months have been the most surprising in the entire Iraq saga to date. I have a feeling that Al-Queda (and the media, and the Democrats), will have a few more surprises coming in the months ahead.


Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I DID!!

I think his analysis of the Iraq situation is quite astute. And it's the same thing I've been seeing. But I'm more interested in the fact that I don't see this particular "good news" reported on Fox News either. And I consider this more troubling.

The article seems to suggest that the story isn't being told to the American people because it doesn't fit with the "storyline." It seems to me more that it isn't being told to the American people.. because if we are seeing success.. then shouldn't we begin to talk about when the war will really end? Liberals don't want to hear Bush's "long war" concept of when the war will end. Conservatives don't want to hear that the war will ever end. It seems that, psychologically, no one in the media is really ready for it to be over.

On a side note, I think we are still overlooking a major issue contributing to instability in Iraq. The political situation is still nowhere near where it needs to be. And the Sadrist party is preparing to put forward a Vote of No Confidence in Maliki's government. And with some good reason.. seeing as most of Maliki's cabinet does not attend cabinet meetings, and half of Maliki's cabinet doesn't even attend to their own department duties. Meanwhile Maliki is still stuck between the Iraqi national intersts, his Shiite coalition's interests, and his American backers' interests. He faces an impossible battle over the privatization of the oil industry (pushed by America but resisted by the people who actually live on the oil deposits [The Kurds and the Shia]). If the Maliki government collapses no amount of military progress against Sunni insurgents will stave off a return to total chaos. And let's not forget the Shiite Mahdi army is still immune to the current successful American operations in the Sunni territories. If this government collapses, we would probably see a massacre of the Sunni by the Shia.. because at this point the Americans have crippled the ability of the Sunnis to fight back.

I still say the only real winner of a continued U.S. presense in Iraq... is the ruling Iranian regime. Regardless. If the war goes well and democracy succeeds in Iraq, Iran has a friendly government lead by the populous Shiite minority, which spent the last 20 years in exile under the protection of Iran. If the war goes badly and democracy fails in Iraq, the Shiites are in the best position to crush their opposition and maintain control of oil fields and sea ports.. all of which benefits their friends in the Iranian government. Either way the Iranian government comes out looking like the benevolent neighbor and protector.

At this point there are three "foreign invaders" currently at work within Iraq. They are the Americans, the Mujahideen, and the Iranians. The Iranians and the Mujahideen fight against each other. The Americans get all the bad publicity. If America gets out, Iran and the Mujahideen are suddenly the "uninvited foreigners." America leaving would be a huge boost for nationalism within Iraq. Then the Mujahideen and Iranians are put in the difficult position of navigating Iraqi politics. The Iranians have to deal with the split between the Sadrists and the other Shiites. The Mujahideen have to deal with the fact that their Sunni brothers now hate them. No one wins. As for Iranian politics, I envision the Iranian adventure in Iraq would do for Iranian liberals the same thing that the American adventure in Iraq did for American liberals.

On a side note I disagree completely with that Vietnam analysis. True, Tet was a huge failure as far as its operational goals, and it outed many of the active Vietcong agents living in South Vietnam. However, it did greatly undermine support for the Thieu government. Further, the U.S., in response to the attacks, was forced to abandon positions in rural areas to defend the cities, which effectively terminated the U.S. pacification effort in the Vietnamese countryside. And while the Vietcong/PAVN did suffer about 50,000 casualties, PAVN never had problems replacing their dead.

As for the Abrams plan.. I found it disgusting. The primary idea behind his plan was to divide American forces into smaller groups so they could reach greater perimeters around a fire base. This was done so that the American troops could serve as bait for Vietcong/PAVN forces. A unit would come under attack, pull back, call for air support, then investigate the aftermath. The strategy resulted in many pointless deaths for American soldiers, and surprisingly light casualties for their enemies. The Vietcong even developed a counter-strategy for this predictable assembly-line style tactic -- they used a timer. They knew how long they had (on average) before they had to get out of the combat zone.

It was foolish to believe, in the first, that a war in Vietnam could be contained within Vietnam. But it was even more foolish to believe that spreading the bombing campaign to Laos and Cambodia would be any more effective than it had been in Vietnam.. By 1970, American forces were looking to Cambodia and Laos because their strategic reliance on calculations and body counts would not allow them to believe that the forces that they were still encountering in South Vietnam were still being supplied through local channels. The primary reason for the Cambodian incursions was to find the mythical Communist Central Office for South Vietnam -- an imaginary supply and logistics base which never actually existed. Our major problem in Vietnam was not that our Media was on the "wrong storyline." The problem was that our military was on the "wrong storyline."

Actually, this isn't true. I saw a piece this morning on Fox about the success of the Surge, and later a piece on a survivor of the WTC who enlisted in the Marines and is now out of the Corps, talking about the successes in Iraq and how "unmarketable" the success stories are.

Disagree here. A bit of an overstatement and somewhat broad and naive.

As a conservative, I do want the war to end. I just don't want it to be a pullout like we did in VietNam because of the Democrat shenanigans as listed in the link I provided above (and apparently what they are still trying to do now with this President), and like we did in Afghanistan under a Democrat after the Soviets left, leaving the population to be slaughtered (and in the case of Afghanistan, helped create the Taliban..........in anger over being abandoned by the U.S.)

Will have to take your word for the majority of this part; however, I do agree about Malik being stuck between two opposing forces, and the fact about the Sunni's going to be slaughtered by the Shia.



Interesting.

Do you equate the "liberals" of Iran with the "liberals" of the U.S.? Iranian liberals would be................liberal against whose policies? The present corrupt regime in Iran? If so, good news!

Of course, to a conservative in the U.S. I would find that not at all comparable to what the "liberals" of the U.S. are..............they are akin to socialists IMHO. Big Government and higher taxation (robbing from the "haves" to give to the "have nots".)

Gotta link for that?

Or, are you a grizzled veteran?

Eh. Maybe it's a "morning" story. I turn on Fox right now and all they're talking about is the USS Cole financial verdict against Sudan.


Well, Conservatives and Liberals are somewhat broad groups.


The alternative, as I see it, to creating our own "conclusion" is an unending U.S. presense in Iraq, similar to Korea. And I simply do not find this strategy to be viable (or well-advised) in the Muslim Middle East. I mean, regardless of what our strategy is, we're there to stand up the Iraqis. Just like we stood up the South Koreans. If we're in it for the same results as South Korea, I don't see any way we could leave in this half of the century. We're somewhat stuck in between. We don't want to "fail," but we don't want to spend another 50 years in this area.


Honestly, I think Maliki's going down in flames. I don't think he has the support to survive the No Confidence vote. And what comes after that.. It took five months to form a government after the last Parliamentary inaugurations. We might be looking at an abandonment/rewriting of the Iraqi Constitution. And that's only if we're lucky enough to see the rule of law endure through the end of the government.


Despite what the American mediaplex has done to the word, the term "liberal" for everyone in the rest of the world means "free, capitalist and democratic." A more general reading of the term, throughout it's entire history in politics, means simply "free from old ideas."

The Conservatives rule Iran currently. "Conservative" in general terms is preference for the "old ways" and desire to preserve the traditions and rules of the past. (Sometimes 'the past' is an imaginary past)

The Conservatives in Iran are benefitted by conflict with the West. It gives them the same strength that 9-11 gave to American Conservatives. If Iran's leaders were suddenly stuck having to arbitrate fighting between their Shiite allies, their popularity would plummet. Liberals in Iran have been on the run since the "axis of evil" talk, which was really unwarranted at the time. Rafsanjani was a decent reformer, and the Iranian political system was ready for those reforms. But the "America factor" turned things around in the next election. Rafsanjani's liberals and moderates did not show up for the election. What Iran's liberals really need is a message that they can take to the people -- the nationalist, Shiite Muslim, Iranian people. The best way they can do this is to take America out of their political equation.


Books. Marilyn Young, Marvin Gettleman. I think there was some detail in the Pentagon Papers about the new strategy too.. obviously before it went into effect.. and the talk was mostly about how they believed it would be a more effective strategy. Me referring to it as "bait" is editorializing, but the strategy is academic -- Small groups, spread out, make contact, call artillery, check to confirm kills.

The goal in the early years.. and in Korea.. and in WW2.. was to use artillery to protect your infantry, and use your infantry as your primary weapon. The strategy under Abrams was to use your infantry as your scouts and use your artillery and your air power as your primary weapon. The major problems, obviously, were that the scouts are all subject to ambush and that artillery cannot confirm a kill instantaneously.. if at all. It was, in my opinion, far too much reliance on technology, and no care given to the protection of the infantry.

Not to belittle your point........but, guess I've watched too many John Wayne movies in which he used his folks as "bait" to draw out the enemy.........with the folks knowing full well that was the goal. Especially when engaged in close arms battles, and guerilla warfare like in V.N. (I've been watching a lot of Westerns and WWII movies lately with J.W. in them.......he even used himself as bait in several of them.) Back to the point I'm making, artillery is fine if you've got a stationary target, from which I understand was NOT the case in V.N. Guerilla and arm-to-arm is different, which includes the little moleholes/tunnels the Viet Cong were famous for in which to hide. The point guys that walk mine fields to find a safe path is another case in point.....

Apparently, aside from personal thoughts about war techniques, Abram's methodology was effective. ??

Let's be honest, ALL of war techniques are ugly. People get killed, including innocents (civilians), but this can't keep war from being waged. Soldiers go into war knowing there is a great likelihood they be killed, and most certainly injured. I'm sure Fit will have something to say about what I've just said. But, God instituted war and people got killed in them....in the O.T.

The quote, "War is Hell," is generally attributed to General Pershing, of the US War Between the States, back in the old days when Hell was considered a real place.

I don't want to disrupt this good conversation. Please carry on while I try to behave! Thank you.

Yeah, there was a lot of self-deception on the part of the Defense Department and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. I mean.. our artillery and bombers were more accurate than any previous such weaponry, but still it had to rely on the eyes of the infantry to know that the enemy was even in the area.


More effective than the Westmoreland/McNamara strategy. But that's not really saying much. Hamburger Hill, notorious epic failure of American strategy in Vietnam was under Abrams. Abrams was still in denial about the real issues in fighting the Vietcong and the PAVN. When the Americans finally reached the top of the hill, the enemy had already withdrawn.


I just think it's bad policy (in war or politics) to throw away men and material needlessly.

I think that the lack of reporting, overtly, is because 1st ammendment rights have been, for some time now, more like 1st ammendment abuse. News companies are like all other companies, and fairly so, in business to make a profit. News wasn't originally intended to be a business, but a source of information. Now it seems to be a source of misinformation. All news is crap. One can get a snippet of truth and you must piece together the real story. I have seen this for over 30 years.

I piece together that the surge is helping. The real enemy in Iraq is nearly defeated. Yet there are others, within Iraq, both Sunni and Shia...probably some Kurds as well, who would derail the entire process for their own personal gain. This is what the surge is intended to quell. The AQ bunch have pretty much resorted to bombing mother children and old people going about their daily lives in order to perpetuate the (probably unsubstantiated) feelings of distrust, after many years of abuse by a leader preferential to one sect, between fellow Iraqis. This would be bad if allowed to continue.

Much the same as is going on in our country at this very moment. Ironic.

Leaves a bad taste too.

Here's a little something...Good news

Having a hard time opening the link. But, I do remember hearing recently that Patraeus is reducing the level of troops in areas where the violence is diminishing.

There is a lot more in th article than just that. It's a Yahoo news article. It speaks also of Sunni leaders (former insurgents) joining the fight with US and Iraqi forces against AQ. They were against the AQ style of Islam that was being imposed in areas that they (AQ) occupied.

I agree. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is finished. They didn't stand much chance in Iraq anyway, because they would never be able to defeat the Iranian-backed Shiite militias. But now the Sunnis are also opposed to this group of terrorists.

But the problem remains.. which you alluded to somewhat. It's not so much that there are "elements" which are interested in derailing the process.. It's more that there is still no political process whatsoever. Al Maliki isn't even strong enough to be considered the "Mayor of Baghdad," he's more of an office manager who's missing half of his staff. Maliki is essentially powerless. He has lost his "moderate coalition." Not a single Sunni lawmaker still supports the Maliki regime. And he has long since alienated large segments of his more natural Shiite base. He's basically standing on a sliver of support from a narrow group of diplomats and America-educated economic elites who have no real connection to the Iraqi people and no fighting stake in the politics -- much like the American-backed regimes of Vietnam.

I'd say the fall of Maliki is not a question of "if" but "when." Muqtada al Sadr is as popular as ever with the Shiites of Iraq who continue to see him as a modern version of the Imam Ali, fighting against the "unlawful usurpers".. to the death. Meanwhile, much like Hezbollah in Lebanon, he's the one seen to be protecting his Shia and revitalizing the Shia neighborhoods. There can be no doubt that when we leave Iraq, a strong Shia government will emerge, and it will be extremely close with Iran and Sadr. The fact that we've spent the last year or two demolishing the Sunni militias in Anbar and Diyala only makes it a certainty that the Shia will rise to control all of Iraq. The Sunnis will probably be forced out of national politics (like the Shia were under Saddam) and the Sunni areas of Anbar and Diyala will become impoverished, disconnected, desperate wastelands, dotted by tent-towns. The Shia will hold on tight to their traditional (oil-rich) lands in southern and central Iraq, and they'll "cleanse" the capital. Their oil will flow and they will become the first powerful Shiite Arab state in the modern world. (Iran being the first modern Shiite Persian state)

The Shiite Iraq will be an enemy of Al Qaeda, just like Iran is an enemy of Al Qaeda. But the Shiite Iraq will most likely be antagonistic towards Israel and supportive of Iranian allies, and other factions that the Iranians are trying to coax into their big tent (Hamas, etc). Iraq's civil war will eventually abate as the Sunnis will realize they have no chance at defeating the aggressive, militant and well-supported Shiite militias. I would not doubt that the Sunnis may invite Al Qaeda back or begin their own terrorist campaign against the Shia government after a certain amount of time has passed.

Honestly.. I don't know why we're still sending people to die over there when the result is so totally indecisive in our larger fight. My cousin's husband leaves next month.

I agree with your observations. However, If Iraq is left as a failed attempt to bring some parts of the region into some sort of mesh with the rest of the world, the problems, as we have come to know them, will continue. You are correrct about Al Maliki but, he can, and almost certainly will, be voted out. A tyrrant has to be physically forced out. Back again later to face a more fomidable foe.