Anthony Shadid reports on a coordinated wave of insurgent attacks across Iraq yesterday:
For weeks, there had been sense of inevitability to the assaults, which killed at least 51 people, many of them police officers. From the American military to residents here, virtually everyone seemed to expect insurgents to seek to demonstrate their prowess as the United States brings its number of troops below 50,000 here. But the anticipation did little to prepare security forces for the breadth of the assault. Iraqi soldiers and police officers brawled at the site of the biggest bombing in Baghdad, and residents heckled them for their impotence in stopping a blast that cut like a scythe through the neighborhood.
….For weeks, insurgents have carried out a daily campaign of bombings, hit-and-run attacks and assassinations against the security forces and officials, seeking to undermine confidence in their ability to secure the country. They remained the target Wednesday in attacks in Falluja, Ramadi, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Basra, Karbala, Mosul and elsewhere.
….The attacks come amid deep popular frustration with the country’s politicians, who have failed to form a government more than five months after elections in March. Shoddy public services, namely electricity, have only sharpened the resentment.
Violence in Iraq is still far below its 2006-07 levels, but the main goal of the surge, in George Bush’s words, was always to provide “breathing space” for political reconciliation that would make its security gains permanent. This has been its Achilles heel ever since it was completed, and the news on this score has continued to get worse for at least the past couple of years. The Florida-like inability to agree on the most recent election results and form a government of any kind is merely the latest act in the play.
And while we’re on the subject of military intervention abroad, Fred Kaplan has a good piece in Slate explaining the regional politics that makes progress in Afghanistan so hard. I don’t think I’m up for two separate posts on the subject of foreign wars today, so instead I’m just tacking this onto the Iraq news. It’s worth reading.
