Iraq: Six Answers on the War and the State of the Country (Rosen)

1. On the war in Iraq, the wisdom of the Beltway pundits might be summed up this way: Bush’s efforts were floundering, then Petraeus saved the day with his surge, converting an ambiguous situation into an unqualified success. What’s the matter with this analysis?

Success isn’t a relevant concept....

The various events that have come to be called “the surge” actually started well before Petraeus took over the war in Iraq, although he did help support and institutionalize some of the changes. And the civil war and cleansing continued well into the surge.

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America's "Sons of Iraq" Returning to the Insurgency? (Williams/Adnan)

One of the heralded features of the US "surge" in Iraq in 2007-8, which purported brought stability and checked violence in the country, was the creation of Sunni militias, known as the "Sons of Iraq" or Awakening Councils. The units were to rally the population against the threat of "foreign" insurgencies such as Al Qa'eda in Iraq.

With the official pull-back of the US military under the December 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, the theory was that the Iraqi Government --- even if it was predominantly Shi'a --- would integrate the Awakening Councils into the national military and security services. In practice, however, that has proved problematic.

Timothy Williams and Duraid Adnan of The New York Times pick up the story:

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