Today, the Washington Post announced that the US government is spying on Iraqi President Nouri Kamal al Maliki. This revelation comes from Bob Woodward's forthcoming (Monday) book The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008. Phew. That is … surprising.
The Post's early redux of Woodward's book also includes a bit of analysis related to yesterday's post on Gian Gentile's writing. Here is the Post's rendering of Woodward's conclusions about the success of the surge:
Overall, Woodward writes, four factors combined to reduce the violence: the covert operations; the influx of troops; the decision by militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to rein in his powerful Mahdi Army; and the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.
And here is a snippet from Gentile's piece in the World Affairs Journal:
But there is a disconnect between claims and reality that runs through the surge narrative. The two factors overwhelmingly and demonstrably accountable for the diminished violence haven't depended on the surge at all. The first was the 2006 decision by senior American officers to pay large sums of money to our former enemies to ally themselves with us in the fight against al-Qaeda‚ a decision that, according to a January 2008 report from U.S. Army headquarters in Iraq, made "significant contributions" to the lowering of violence. The practice began in 2006 in Ramadi, where, tellingly, the resulting decline in attacks predated the surge. The second factor was Muqtada al-Sadr's decision to stand down, flee to an exile in Iran, and order his forces to suspend attacks against Americans‚ a decision that top U.S. officers in Iraq praise nearly every day for the ensuing reduction in violence. Absent these twin developments, Americans would still be dying in large numbers.
They aren't entirely in agreement, but there's certainly some overlap. Amazing how quickly Gentile's analysis might go from “quixotic” to more, um, liberal mainstream. Of course, just because the Post said that Bob Woodward said it doesn't make it accurate, and Woodward appears to give the surge a little more credit than does Gentile. But Woodward is unarguably an influential voice on the subject of the Bush administration – I’ll be interested to see whether he refers to Gentile's writings in his book.
