Just another month in the life and death of Iraq II

Good news? Is it possible? Well, yes. And no.

Death seems to be in decline in Baghdad this month, according to the L.A. Times:

An ambitious military sweep appears to be dramatically reducing Baghdad's homicide rate, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday -- even as violence nationwide killed at least 80 people, including six U.S. soldiers in and around the capital.

Last month, the Baghdad morgue received more than 1,800 bodies, a record high. This month, the morgue is on track to receive less than a quarter of that.

I have no doubt that the Baghdad sweep is doing some good. And perhaps the numbers really have declined as much as the L.A. Times is reporting they have. Perhaps, to some degree, the U.S. military is right that "the capital's declining violence to a sweep involving 8,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi troops aimed at stopping sectarian violence". I have far less confidence in Prime Minister Maliki's seemingly idiotic claim that there will never be a civil war in Iraq (define civil war) and that there is now "is an atmosphere of reconciliation" in Iraq (between whom exactly?).

And consider the probing questions posed by Juan Cole, who responds directly to the L.A. Times's seemingly misguided article:

This article says that killings are down substantially in Baghdad itself, what with thousands of US and Iraqi troops making security sweeps through the most dangerous neighborhoods. The first question is whether the decline in deaths in Baghdad (which is only relative) has been offset by violence in Mosul, Baqubah and elsewhere. The second question is whether the violence will remain lower when the sweeps end, as inevitably they will. Can the Iraqi troops take over at that point and continue to be effective against the guerrillas? My guess is, "no." In which case the US "Battle for Baghdad" is just a delaying tactic, putting off the day when the west of the capital falls altogether into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas. If that happened, the Green Zone might not be far behind.

I am eager to see the violence end. The point of our "Just another day" and "Just another month" series here at The Reaction is to highlight the underreported violence in Iraq, to emphasize in a non-partisan way the human cost of this ongoing war. But it is only with sadness that we do this. The violence under Saddam was deplorable. So is the violence in the post-Saddam era.

Yet it seems to me that this "good" news is dangerously misleading. The violence in Baghdad, and only in Baghdad, has been lessened by an American effort that, as Professor Cole stresses, will end. It has thus been artificially lessened. Once the American effort ends, or perhaps even before it does, the violence will likely return to its pre-sweep levels. The only way to end the violence, or at least to reduce it to manageable levels, is to build a sustainable peace, that is, a legitimately self-governing Iraq that can impose order and provide for a stable civil society. Iraq needs a Leviathan, but one that is both liberal and democratic. The American sweep in Baghdad may be saving lives, but it isn't anything more than a stop-gap measure that makes things look better than they really are.

This isn't good news. It's just temporary (and relative) not bad news. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise.