The Republican narrative about the current situation in Iraq is that "the Surge has worked." The Surge, we are told, provided the security conditions which have resulted in decreased violence, a move toward relative normalcy for Iraqis, and -- ironically -- a chance for Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi parliament to reject US demands for a sustained occupational force in Iraq.
We are told that the very fact that Maliki is able to demand a timetable, and to reject US demands for among other things, contractor immunity and free military reign in Iraq, is an indication of just how successful General Petraeus and President Bush's "surge" strategy has worked. The very strategy Senator McCain had urged all along. This shows that McCain is wiser than Obama, even if it does have the ironic effect of benefiting Obama in the election.
Nothing about the above narrative is correct, and understanding why it is not correct will be crucial for countering Republican campaign narratives over the next weeks and months. It will not be easy to counter because it will be the dominant narraitve in the major media. Luckily, Obama supporters probably do not need to totally rebut the major media narrative -- a near impossible task -- but merely keep hints at the truth in play.
The story about "the success of the Surge" is the story that McCain supporters, and the major media, will be selling to the American people over the next few weeks. It will be an attempt to show that Senator Obama and the Democrats generally were wrong about "the Surge" and that MCain was correct.
Here is an example of this narrative. It is, at the moment, practically the conventional wisdom in the major media. I am taking this example from the Canadian paper Globe and Mail, just because it was published today, but there are any number of reiterations of this theme in American papers and on American TV.
Ironically, success of the surge in Iraq is helping Obama
JOHN IBBITSON
July 11, 2008
WASHINGTON -- It is the strangest of political ironies. Every report out of Iraq suggests that John McCain's campaign to rescue that plagued country through a surge in troop strength has worked.
But it is Barack Obama who may stand to reap the benefits.
The situation in Iraq appears to have improved beyond anyone's hopes or expectations. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has achieved effective control over much of the country, thanks to a much-improved Iraqi security force bolstered by increased oil revenues.
The U.S. general in charge of training the Iraqi military said this week its army would be self-sustaining and able to exert authority in all parts of Iraq "by the middle of next year."
-- snip --
And here is a more pointed example of the narrative from a pundit, from yesterday (July 10).
How McCain Could Win
Richard Baehr
Thu Jul 10, 3:30 PM ET
-- snip --
The real judgment issue comes into play with regard to Obama's call for a quick withdrawal from Iraq, and his opposition to the surge in the spring and summer of 2007. John McCain risked his political future calling for more troops for an unpopular war and said he would rather win the war than the White House. Obama stuck to his left wing anti-war mantra, and has been proven to have been wrong. Obama thought the surge would fail, but it has succeeded beyond anyone's expectations.
I'm sure this looks very familiar.
The only problem is that it is false.
Recent gains in security in Iraq have been due to negotiations between various factions within Iraq, often mediated by authorities in Iran. In each case, the US wanted to use force while the Iraqis found a way to negotiate a peace. This has often left US officials frusterated. After the negotiated peace in Basra, for example, we read things like this: '"We may have wasted an opportunity in Basra to kill those that needed to be killed,' said one U.S. defense official, who could speak candidly about the issue only if he was granted anonymity."
Similarly, a US plan to engage in a major offensive in Sadr City was scuttled when Maliki called it off in favor of a negotiated peace with the Mahdi Army. The US had built a concrete wall around parts of Sadr City in preparation for a major push. The New York Times in May reported on what this US plan looked like:
Even while U.S. forces deploy reconnaissance drones and satellite-guided rockets, the American strategy in Sadr City is a throwback to a more primitive form of warfare. It depends on concrete - lots of it, which comes in large slabs that are being assembled into an imposing barrier five kilometers, or three miles, long.
The Americans began building the wall a month ago, working east to west. The work started at night but soon extended into the day as U.S. commanders sought to speed up the construction.
Supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, have denounced the wall as a nefarious effort to divide the city. Militia fighters with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and small arms have been trying to halt its construction.
The Iraqi-Iraqi peace agreement ended plans for a major offensive. UK Telegraph, May 24:
Under the deal, brokered between the Iraqi government and forces loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, two Iraqi divisions will take up positions in the vast slum in eastern Baghdad but no US troops will be allowed in.
The ceasefire is the third negotiated with Sadr and scuppers US plans for an assault on his stronghold. Seven US battalions had assembled on the edges of the Shia bastion, with tanks, armoured cars and a stockpile of munitions ready for a battle of attrition which was projected to last weeks. Just four battalions will remain when troop reductions are completed.
"We just don't need the battalions that are here since the ceasefire held up," said Major Travis Thompson of 1-6 Cavalry Regiment, deputy commander of Sadr City joint security station. "It's just a different situation in which we have to concentrate on providing services to win the people's support rather than fighting street by street."
Now, how is all this good news about Iraqi-Iraqi peace received by US officials? With pessimism. The general attitude is that any Iraqi peace which pre-empts US military action must be bad because (1) it prevents the US from killing people who need to be killed and (2) if the US didn't do it then it can't be trusted. Also, (3): Iraq sucks. New York Times, June 21
Senior U.S. military commanders are seeing a new confidence among Iraqi leaders. They said that the success of the recent military operations had played a role in the Iraqi government's firm rebuff of American negotiators over a new long-term U.S.-Iraq security pact.
"They are feeling very strong right now, after Basra, Mosul and Sadr City," one senior U.S. official said.
But the Iraqi successes in Basra and Sadr City were not so much victories as heavy fighting followed by truces that allowed the militias to melt away with their weapons.
"We may have wasted an opportunity in Basra to kill those that needed to be killed," said one U.S. defense official, who could speak candidly about the issue only if he was granted anonymity.
What remains to be seen is whether the Iraqi government can capitalize on the successes with concrete steps that improve the lives of people in those areas, such as basic municipal services and economic opportunities.
"The fear is unrealistic expectations," the U.S. defense official said. "Services do take time."
The first paragraph of the above story read "What's going right in Iraq? And can it last?" The story is narrative construction and the narrative is always a variation of this. It consists of two essential components.
(1) The surge is working and that shows McCain was right and Obama was wrong.
(2) Any positive developments in Iraq not attributable to the surge, in fact in spite of the surge, are downplayed, criticized and written off.
The fact that (2) vastly outweighs (1) is also not to be mentioned.
One reason that it is very easy to tell the story this way is that any time US military officers are interviewed, they will of course, and naturally, think that "the mission" of bringing peace to Iraq has something to do with them, that peace is successful to the extent that they brought and they understand it. When US ground troops are found who actually want to stay in Iraq, and are interviewed, they tend to say that they want to stay until "the mission is completed." That they are being told that "the mission" is up to Americans to accomplish, despite a lot of evidence that peace is happening in spite of their presence, is a testiment to the power of American narrative, not to say propoganda.
By telling US troops that the peace is up to them, and then quoting them as saying they don't want to leave, and then using that as a justification for staying, a perfect propoganda circle is created. That it only tenuously touches reality is of course of no concern to elite planners.
As for what is really going on, we can say this: Sadr and Maliki have negotiated a peace with the help of Iranian mediators. Sistani has called for an end to Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, and seems to have called for an end to the US occupation.
That Iran has a lot to do with these negotiated peace agreements no doubt has a lot to do with American distrust of them.
Gareth Porter has a remarkable analysis of all this out today. I suggest reading the whole thing, but here are some excerpts.
Bush outfoxed in the Iraqi sands
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's demand for a timetable for complete United States military withdrawal from Iraq, confirmed on Tuesday by his National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, has signaled the almost certain defeat of the George W Bush administration's aim of establishing a long-term military presence in the country.
-- snip --
In November, Bush and Maliki agreed on a set of principles as the basis for negotiating agreements on the stationing of US forces and bilateral cooperation, including a US guarantee of Iraq's security and territorial integrity. In February 2008, US and Iraqi military planners were already preparing for a US-British-Iraqi military operation later in the summer to squeeze the Sadrists out of the southern city of Basra.
But after the US draft agreement of March 7 was given to the Iraqi government, the attitude of the Maliki government toward the US military presence began to shift dramatically, just as Iran was playing a more overt role in brokering ceasefire agreements between the two warring Shi'ite factions.
-- snip --
In another sign of the shifting Iraqi position away from Washington, in early May, Maliki refused to cooperate with a scheme of Vice President Dick Cheney and Petraeus to embarrass Iran by having the Iraqi government publicly accuse it of arming anti-government Shi'ites in the South. The prime minister angered US officials by naming a committee to investigate the US charges.
Even worse for the Bush administration, a delegation of Shi'ite officials to Tehran that was supposed to confront Iran over the arms issue instead returned with a new Iranian strategy for dealing with Muqtada, according to Alissa J Rubin of the New York Times: reach a negotiated settlement with him.
What all this means for Obama
I am not adept at political strategy. But I am pretty sure it would not be effective or necessary for Obama to try to counter the major media narrative about the new peace in Iraq by presenting this other narrative that I have provided, even if it is much closer to the truth. Rather, Obama should leave it at "Iraqis are finding ways to make their own peace and don't want us there anymore."
When the issue of the surge comes up, and the Obama campaign is confronted with the idea that the peace in Iraq is due to a McCain-supported strategy, the Obama campaign should say, "Our troops did a spectacular job. But to keep them in Iraq longer than their welcome is to turn Iraq into a Vietnam-style proxy war with Iran. And I do not support that." This is actually very close to the truth -- leaving out only that "a proxy war with Iran" was the idea all along -- but it avoids presenting the listener with a strange narrative about the war all at once. The Obama campaign doesn't need to do that. We, the crazy left base, can do that.
Of course, any advice I might give about how to run a campaign is not to be taken too seriously. But hopefully the presentation of this counter-narrative about the past year in Iraq, what it means, what did actually work and what did not actually work, and the resulting of view of "McCain's surge" and its wisdom, is of some help.