Evidence on the Iraq surge

The surge of troops to Baghdad in Iraq is two months old and it's clear that it will take a higher level of commitment from U.S. troops to see it through. However, is the strategy paying off? Can it end the cycle of violence perpetuated by the problem of "too few fingers in the dike"?

In Baghdad, the surge seems to be working to reduce militia-style killings.

Maj. Gen. William Campbell, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Wednesday militia-related murders in Baghdad had dropped by 26 percent in March compared with the record highs of February.

And as Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted in a new study published Tuesday, "February and March saw a 50 percent decrease in sectarian execution-style killings" in the Iraqi capital of 6 million people.

The Christian Science Monitor has a more anecdotal assessment, noting that despite the quantitative reduction in deaths, insurgents have managed to strike deep in the Green Zone as well as recently destroying a major bridge in Baghdad.

The first article also highlights the shift in insurgent strategy:

At the same time that the numbers and rate of militia-type killings in Baghdad have started falling dramatically, another violence benchmark figure has been rising fast.

"Iraq deaths (from car bombs) increased 15 percent from February to March," Cordesman wrote in his CSIS study, entitled "Iraq's Sectarian and Ethnic Violence: Developments Through Spring 2007."

An excellent NPR interview with retired Gen. Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, covered much the same territory. The general noted that the surged troops are enabling U.S. soldiers to actually occupy large swaths of Baghdad, instead of operating from large bases, as they've done in the past. His conclusion: "it's much to early to be predictive about [the surge]."

I'll make this prediction: if we're not willing to keep those boots on the ground in those neighborhoods, they'll revert to insurgency. But that's a long-term occupation, which Americans certainly don't have the stomach for after four years of - as the general called it - failed strategy.