{"id":13425,"date":"2007-10-31T11:18:05","date_gmt":"2007-10-31T15:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13425.html"},"modified":"2007-10-31T11:18:05","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T15:18:05","slug":"ethnically-cleansed-neighborhoods-lead-to-less-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ethnically-cleansed-neighborhoods-lead-to-less-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ethnically cleansed neighborhoods’ lead to less violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, the WaPo ran a report<\/a> on a U.S. battalion’s perspective on the war in Iraq, and quoted Maj. Eric Timmerman describing the conditions this way: “It’s just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing.”<\/p>\n

For reasons that I haven’t been able to fully grasp, it’s one of the aspects of recent events in Iraq that seems to be left out of the broader debate. It’s certainly encouraging when we see evidence of a decline in sectarian violence, but when war supporters boast about the results, they seem to miss the point. The results aren’t evidence of a successful “surge,” they’re evidence of a successful cleansing campaign.<\/p>\n

The Government Accountability Office’s Joe Christoff<\/a> touched on this yesterday before the House Appropriations Committee.<\/p>\n

“I think that’s [ethnic cleansing] an important consideration in even assessing the overall security situation in Iraq. You know, we look at the attack data going down, but it’s not taking into consideration that there might be fewer attacks because you have ethnically cleansed neighborhoods, particularly in the Baghdad area.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As TP noted<\/a>, ret. Gen. James Jones said the same thing last month, noting unfortunate “progress” in a Shi’a-led ethnic cleansing campaign.<\/p>\n

Except this isn’t the “progress” we’ve been waiting for. It’s the opposite<\/i>. Supporters of the president’s policy have argued for years that a U.S. withdrawal would lead to the forced displacement of Iraqi civilians. But what war supporters argued would happen has already<\/i> happened, it just developed slower.<\/p>\n

As McClatchy recently reported<\/a>, military officers believe drops in sectarian attacks “may be an indication that ethnic cleansing has been completed in many neighborhoods and that there aren’t as many people to kill.”
\n
\nMatt Yglesias highlighted this point<\/a> well the other day.<\/p>\n

This is the basically fraudulent nature of the American enterprise in Iraq. We’re told we can’t leave because of the civil war that would break out or intensify or whatever if we do. But our troops aren’t really capable of meaningfully impacting the result of the sectarian conflict anyway. Instead, they’re just being plopped into the middle of it and exposed to harm, so that when the conflict eventually ends (as conflicts tend to) we can call the results “victory” and stay in Iraq forever. If the violence waxes, that shows the war needs to continue. If it wanes, that<\/i> shows that we’re winning and need to keep on keeping on. Meanwhile, in the real world the civil war and ethnic cleansing we’re supposed to be preventing are things that have already happened.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Newsweek added<\/a> recently that the Maliki government, which Sunnis do not trust, has asked Sunni residents to return to their old neighborhoods in exchange for a reward worth about $800 US. It’s not working — said a U.S. official familiar with refugee issues, “Sunnis are reluctant to go back to areas when it’s only Iraqi security forces there managing their safety. In a lot of cases security forces participated in their displacement.”<\/p>\n

With or without us, the Iraqi civil war will end eventually — with a predictable outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, the WaPo ran a report on a U.S. battalion’s perspective on the war in Iraq, and quoted Maj. Eric Timmerman describing the conditions this way: “It’s just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing.” For reasons that I haven’t been able to fully grasp, it’s one of the aspects of recent events in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}