John Podhoretz is delighted to report that, uh, other people are reporting that there's been a drop in violence in Baghdad lately.  But so far this follows the usual pattern—violence gets out of control, the US moves in and sits on the hardest-hit areas, violence declines, the US hands over security duties to Iraqis, and violence ramps up again.

Every single military official I've heard in the past several weeks—a few Iraqis and quite a few Americans—says that the test of this new security push will be how well Iraqi Army and police units perform once the American presence declines again.  They also—very significantly—say that the ultimate solution to the violence is political, not military.  So if you're trying to make predictions about where Iraq will be next month or next year, and not just next week, you'd do well to keep an eye on the Iraqi government and the Iraqi security forces.  One clue to where things stand in the Iraqi government is that everyone is still bending over backwards to avoid naming specific militias as part of the problem.  And the word on the street in some of the targeted neighborhoods is that the insurgents are coming back now that the Americans have swept through and moved on.

But I'm glad to see that Podhoretz has newfound faith that house-to-house searches and civil affairs programs can defeat an insurgency.  It's a cheerier perspective than his coy ruminations on the strategic necessity of genocide.

 

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