The Redhunter

Good news certainly, but two more things need to happen in order for this success to matter.

One, the Iraqi security forces must be able to hold these areas themselves. We've cleared them, and are holding them now, but can't forever. David Kilcullen, Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser at MNF-Iraq, has said that after our clear and hold " the key activity (will be) to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them." Last October General Casey tried to secure Baghdad, but we didn't have enough troops to hold the areas we had cleared, and the Iraqis were not up to the job.

Second, military success must lead to political solutions. As Frederick Kagan made clear a few weeks ago, political solutions can only come after military success, but it must be clear that their is political progress.

The New York Times (h/t NRO) also has an article on Baquba (spellings vary), the provincial capital of the Diyala province. The insurgents used to rule this area with a heavy hand, imposing their own justice through a system of Islamc courts. The Times reporter acknowledges a new coalition between American forces and Sunni leaders. The good news is that this represents political progress on the local level

Capt. Ben Richards had been battling insurgents from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for three weeks when he received an unexpected visitor.

Abu Ali walked into the Americans’ battle-scarred combat outpost with an unusual proposal: the community leader was worried about the insurgents, and wanted the soldiers’ help in taking them on.

The April 7 meeting was the beginning of a new alliance and, American commanders hope, a portent of what is to come in the bitterly contested Diyala Province.

Using his Iraqi partners to pick out the insurgents and uncover the bombs they had seeded along the cratered roads, Captain Richards’s soldiers soon apprehended more than 100 militants, including several low-level emirs. The Iraqis called themselves the Local Committee; Captain Richards dubbed them the Kit Carson scouts.

“It is the only way that we can keep Al Qaeda out,” said Captain Richards, who operates from a former Iraqi police station in the Buhritz sector of the city that still bears the sooty streaks from the day militants set it aflame last year.

The American military has struggled for more than four years to train and equip the Iraqi Army. But here the local Sunni residents, including a number of former insurgents from the 1920s Revolution Brigades, have emerged as a linchpin of the American strategy.

The new coalition reflects some hard-headed calculations on both sides. Eager for intelligence on their elusive foes, American officers have been willing to overlook the past of some of their newfound allies.

Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias. In a surprising twist, the jihadists — the Americans’ most ardent foes — made the new strategy possible. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi organization with a small but significant foreign component, severely overplayed its hand, spawning resentment by many residents and other insurgent groups.

The article goes on to discuss some of the cooperation between local residents and leaders with American forces. Tips from locals about the location of al Qaeda fighters have proven accurate.

Unfortunately, this progress on the local level is tempered by problems at the top.

But with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government showing scant progress toward political reconciliation and the American military eager to achieve a measure of stability before its elevated troop levels begin to shrink, American commanders appear determined to proceed with this more decentralized strategy — one that relies less on initiatives taken by Iraqi leaders in Baghdad and more on newly forged coalitions with local Iraqis.

Whether or not this works remains to be seen.

It's the lack of progress on the national level that has members of Congress worried. The latest Republican to defect is Senator Pete Domenici (N.M.). I a statement Thursday to reporters at a news conference in Albuquerque, he said that

"We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress," Domenici said. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

Domenici is trying to have it both ways, but what he's saying amounts to "let's abandon what we're doing now and give up." Saying that you want to "move our troops out of combat operations" is for all practical purposes the same as demanding an immediate withdrawal.

If you don't want to believe me on this take it from Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of Multi-National Division-Center, and the 3rd Infantry Division. His part of Phantom Thunder is Operation Marne Torch. You can watch the video below, or read the transcript.

Here's the take-away

Q General, it's Jamie McIntyre from CNN. Just again to follow up on the same theme, if -- as you're no doubt aware, the mood in Washington is increasingly toward bringing those extra surge forces home sooner rather than later, in fact, some time in the next couple of months. How would that affect your ability to carry out your mission, given that you've said it's those surge forces that have given you the ability to go into these places?

GEN. LYNCH: It would be a mess, Jamie. It'd be a mess. Those surge forces are giving us the capability we have now to take the fight to the enemy, and the enemy only responds to force and we now have that force. You know, we can conduct detailed kinetic strikes, we can do cordon and searches, and we can deny the enemy the sanctuaries. If those surge forces go away, that capability goes away, and the Iraqi security forces aren't ready yet to do that.

So now what you're going to find if you did that, is you'd find the enemy regaining ground, re-establishing a sanctuary, building more IEDs, carrying those IEDs in Baghdad, and the violence would escalate. It would be a mess.

Call me cynical, but what I think if the withdraw-now crowd gets its way, they'll then blame the ensuing bloodbath on President Bush. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you want to say that we should halt Phantom Thunder and start to withdraw the troops, make your case. But don't do so without examining what will happen in Iraq as a result. Many on the left demand that conservatives (or at least neo-cons) take responsiblity for the failures thus far in Iraq. Fine. But if you're demanding an immediate withdrawal, will you take responsibility for what happens afterwards?