The 'progress machine'

Baghdad is where the surge is concentrated and where the biggest (positive) results were expected from the surge. Just yesterday in Baghdad, reports show a car bombing, an attack on Iraqi troops, and another crop of bodies turning up to demonstrate that sectarian killings continue right under the noses of the surging troops.

However, the surge has also served to re-locate violence to previously stable areas, such as Kurdistan. Mosul and Kirkuk are two of those Kurdish cities that have seen previously unheard-of kidnappings, roadside bombs, car bombs, drive-by shootings, and brazen attacks on troops.

The events show below are just a typical day. Usually none of these tragedies merits a mention on the American media, yet for the people who live in these areas it represents anything but "normalcy" or "stability". It instead creates a fearful environment that induces people to turn to their sectarian militia for protection - at a price, of course. The more that communities are defined as one militia's "turf", the harder it is "reconcile" those communities with the rest of the area. But until the "gang war" breaks out, the surface appears stable and relatively calm.

That is what the "bottom-up reconciliation" really is; the staking of turf so that inter-militia conflict can be obviated. As long as the militias co-operate with U.S. troops against Al-Qaeda, or just simply label their competitors as "Al-Qaeda" in order to have the U.S. troops wipe them out, then the commanders can call this "progress". This "progress" can then be packaged and sold wholesale to the American media as 'proof' that the surge is "working".

This is the 'progress machine' that allows Republicans to live their delusional vision that we are always "winning". Senior officers are happy to avoid a "Shinseki Treatment" by passing along this illusion of "progress", because it makes the Bush Administration happy, and that means promotion, or at least the continuation of one's career. They can always create another "Operation Whatever" to push the violence someplace else. This proves our military superiority over the "insurgents". But the "insurgents" do not have be militarily superior; they just have to be tenacious. They certainly are tenacious, having survived for 4 1/2 years so far.

Have you ever really heard a definition of the term "insurgent" before, as it applies to Iraq?
Are they Al-Qaeda? Does the term include sectarian militias, or only those militias that continue their terrorist activites while allied with us? Is an Iraqi "insurgent" anyone who opposes the Al-Maliki government, or just someone who opposes the U.S. occupation? Does the term "insurgent" include those who engage in kidnapping, extortion, protection rackets, black market arms dealing, and ethnic cleansing or does it merely refer to those who carry out bombings and attacks on military and police?

Yes, let's keep it vague so that we can refer to anyone killed or arrested as an "insurgent". That way we can show inflated progress with a straight face. Just as in Vietnam, anyone who was killed in bombardments, artillery fire or just "got in the way" was labeled "VietCong", so too is the label "insurgent" being sloppiliy applied in the case of Iraq. We don't ask questions, because we want to "win", and anything that makes it look like we are winning is fair game. This is what we get for $12 billion a week: shifty "accounting" that keeps the "shareholders" from asking questions.


reports from Reuters

* BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb killed seven people and wounded 30 others in the Kadhimiya district in northwestern Baghdad, police said.

* MOSUL - The body of a university lecturer was found in the southeast of the northern city of Mosul, five days after he was abducted, police said.

* MOSUL - Five people were wounded including three policemen by three separate roadside bombs in Mosul, police said.

* ARAB JABOUR - U.S. forces said they discovered an execution site containing human skulls and decomposing bodies in Arab Jabour, an agricultural area on the southern outskirts of Baghdad.

* BAGHDAD - Police said they found nine bodies in different districts in Baghdad on Friday.

* BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol, killing one soldier and wounding two others in Mansour district in western Baghdad on Friday, police said.

*NAJAF - Gunmen killed a man in a drive-by shooting in Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, on Friday, police said.

* KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a man in a drive-by shooting in southern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, on Friday, police said.