The Fading War

After President Obama’s election and the adoption of the nineteen month withdrawal plan, the war in Iraq has faded out of the public debate. However, the war in Iraq is far from fading on the battlefield, and the violence in Iraq could be on the verge of increasing.

According to Casualties.org 4,299 American military service members have died in Iraq and March was the lowest level of American casualties (9) since the war in Iraq began. However, last month was the highest total of American casualties (19) since September of last year, and this month 17 service members have died in Iraq.

The Washington Post reported yesterday, that three United States soldiers were killed and nine were wounded while on patrol in a marketplace in western Baghdad. Also, early that day eight Sunnis where killed in a suicide bombing in Kirkuk.

In northern Iraq tensions between the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs are mounting. According to an article in the New York Times earlier this week, the Kurds have refused to recognize the Iraqi government’s sovereignty over the Kurdish occupied Nineveh province. The newly elected Sunni Arab governor was not allowed to enter a Kurdish controlled town, a Sunni Arab Nineveh police chief was not allowed to cross a bridge into a Kurdish controlled area, and there have been other similar incidents in the last several weeks.

Early this month the New York Times reported on a bombing in Sadr City; that kind of violence had not been seen in the city since November of 2006. The report stated that sectarian violence had increased recently, and the victims of the attacks expressed the possibility of retaliation against those they felt where responsible.

“…the people were angry and they started talking about reacting. Some of them said that they were ready to return back to the old days, and sink deep into a sectarian war again. Until last week I would not have believed that Iraqis dared to think that there is a possibility of returning to hell.”

This violence precede the scheduled pulling out of American troops from Sadr City, and according to an article in the Washington Post, the residents of Sadr City fear that at best there will be lawlessness and at worst there will be civil war. This is going to be a key moment for the war in Iraq, and for the Obama Administration. If the violence escalates will the current administration continue to withdraw its forces, or will it change strategy because of the conditions on the ground and the political realities of a possible civil war.

The tentative date for the Iraqi elections has been set for January 30th, and this election will be the second election since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the first election to be organized exclusively by the Iraqi government. Although, according to an article in the Washington Post, new coalitions across Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurdish could be formed, and there is the possibility of a coalition government.

Thomas E. Ricks, author of The Gamble and Fiasco, has written at Foreign Policy.com about the unraveling of the “surge era deals in Iraq” since March, and today posted the ninth installment. The unraveling of these deals has included the Shiite lead government of Iraq arresting leaders of the Awakening forces, integrating only 5,000 of the promised 20,000 Awakening forces into the Iraqi security forces, and not paying members of the Awakening forces their agreed upon payments.

As the Iraq war has faded into the background of the nation’s conscience, being replaced by other foreign policy issues such as Afghanistan and Pakistan and domestic issues such as the economic crisis, the urgency to leave Iraq and the dramatic cost of the war has also faded. There was a collective sigh of relief when Barack Obama was elected President and many of us, myself included, felt as if the war in Iraq would soon be at an end. The sixteen month timetable to leave Iraq that was originally laid out by Obama during the Presidential campaign seemed measured, reasonable, and realistic. The nineteen month timetable to leave Iraq seemed at first like an acceptable compromise, although the prospect of leaving between 30,000 and 50,000 service members in Iraq seemed questionable.

It remains important to continue to pressure this administration to end the war in Iraq, and with every day that passes and with every soldier that we lose it becomes more and more important to end this war of choice.