YESTERDAY the New York Times published yet another article in an ongoing series that might be called “The Surge Has Failed.” This one was titled “Commanders Say Push in Baghdad Is Short of Goal.” The article reports on a one-page summary of a document the Times characterized only as an “internal military assessment.” According to that document and interviews with some commanders, the paper argues that the Baghdad Security Plan is not meeting its goals in securing the population of Baghdad, largely because of sectarian bias within the Iraqi police.
The article contains some important distortions. The authors state, “American commanders have also had to send troops outside the capital, to deal with a sharp rise in violence in Diyala Province and to search for American soldiers kidnapped south of the capital.” In fact, Generals Raymond Odierno and David Petraeus decided from the outset to deploy additional U.S. forces to the “belts” around Baghdad, both south and north, in order to interdict the lines of communication used by both Sunni and Shiia terrorists to send weapons and fighters into Baghdad. Violence had been rising in Diyala since mid-2006, and the U.S. command decided to address it early this year because instability there contributes directly to violence in Baghdad. The southern belts house car-bomb factories and terrorist safe-havens, which is why MNF-I decided to clear them before attempting to secure Baghdad. The decisions to flow additional forces into these areas slowed the pace of clear-and-hold operations in Baghdad, but these operations will go a long way toward ensuring that peace established in the capital will be stable and durable. The decision to flow forces into the belts was a sensible adaptation to the reality on the ground at the start of the new plan.
