My fellow Rockheads, consider if you will. Operation Fadr al-Qanoon (which the media calls the “Baghdad security plan”) is underway. Progress is measurable, remember though, that this is a marathon, it’s still a bit early to know how it will turn out, but there is reason to hope.
The message for all of us, especially professionals like me who do this for a living, is patience, family members who have loved ones in Iraq can also counsel patience to their friends and acquaintances, we need to steady the nerves of our fellow Americans. The war has been going for almost four years, the current strategy just few weeks. We need to give it more time.
It will take time to bring security to the people of Baghdad and the Al Anbar Province. To do this , we need to build trust with the people, engage community leaders, develop intelligence and trusted networks, then compete with the insurgents and death squads to deny them access to their targets – their fellow Iraqis, whom they cynically exploit and kill. All these things we are doing, but the process cannot be rushed, and requires detailed local understanding: so we move at the pace the Iraqis can sustain.
Patience, determination, courage and stamina are vital. Political reconciliation at the grass roots level is what is going make this work, with security as a buffer. Needless to say, we are not leaving this to luck: some commentators have focused on the troop surge, but the main effort isn't the surge, the anti war crowd as usual focuses on the narrow, missing the big picture almost entirely. The main effort is a political effort, by Iraqis with our support, to reconcile at the local level. The surge is simply to create an environment for this political effort to take place. This is going to be a lot like heavy peace enforcement or police work, not so much like classical counterinsurgency, let alone conventional combat. And with just one additional brigade in Baghdad and four more on the way, look at the result; we are getting somewhere now on a political level. And there is an oil revenue sharing agreement; we've cleared a high hurdle.
Our task is to stay alert, focused, and with a keen eye, read the situation, ready to modify our approach as this develop.
I think these are the major trends:
Muqtada al-Sadr has run off to Iran, leaving some of his thugs scratching their heads and wondering if they have been Persian stooges all along.
Iraq on the whole has been relatively quiet, as it has been for much of the past year, nearly two. At least half the incidents in Iraq still happen within Baghdad city limits; control Baghdad, and you have the upper hand, the insurgents and terrorists knew this inherently having lived in the country all or most of their lives, it just took us a while to catch up.
Al Qa’ida in Iraq has successfully been marginalized, with alliances of local Sunni leaders, and some other jihadist groups, opposing its brutality and murder, its terrorist campaign of viciously murdering fellow muslims in the streets. They are contesting its self-styled, self proclaimed leadership.
Increased targeting of helicopters has led to increased shoot downs (out of hundreds of flights every day) a Baghdad helicopter ride is still safer than a cab ride in New York City..
Security in key neighborhoods of Baghdad shows positive signs of improvement, as Americans and Iraqis partner at the grass roots to clamp down on violence and insurgent influence. Terrorists have are now using car bombs against innocent bystanders in markets and public places a sign that they know where the danger lies (loss of influence with the population) and are trying to kill the “surge” using the most mass casualty producing terrorist weaponry available, in other words, they are truly desperate now to influence not only Iraqis, but the American public, you need to keep that in mind.
Some sectarian and insurgent groups have seemingly appeared out of nowhere to attack outposts, local communities working with the government, and security forces; more desperate measures.
This last trend is the most professionally intriguing. In counterinsurgency operations killing the enemy is not difficult, finding them is difficult. But finding them, and distinguishing them from the innocent population, can be terribly difficult. In shifting our tactics away from directly hunting down insurgents, and to protecting the people, we have undercut insurgent influence and they know it, their options are to flee, wait us out, or come into the open to fight, to contest control of the neighborhoods, they will not do this for it means certain death. But the fact that some are coming into the open suggests they realize that waiting us out is not an option. It also makes the job of finding the enemy far easier. This is good, but we must not lose sight of the focus; protect the people.
On this score, again, it’s too early to say for sure but initial signs are really encouraging. One indication that is not very useful is car bombs, we can expect these to be one of the last insurgent tactics to diminish, for a couple of reasons. It takes an entire community, coupled with its local security forces to defeat a clandestine suicide bomber, and it will take a while to build effective networks to achieve this. Second, insurgent tactics are driven by the need to capture the attention of the nearest television camera, nothing does this better than a big bomb; remember that. The bad guys will hang on to this method as long as the news media reward it.
Overall, then, though early signs give us genuine reason to hope, prudence, patience and professional judgment must be our watchwords. There will be tough days as always; the problems remain daunting, complex and deeply ingrained in the social and political fabric of the Iraqi society. Violence will ebb and flow, come and go, and there will be “spikes”. But over time, if the strategy works (and I think it will), we should see a downward trend in violence and an increase in trust and reconciliation at the local level, in remaining ready, as we certainly are, as we always have been, as we have been doing, to refine our approach if needed.
We must not allow ourselves to confuse the country of Iraq, where there is a real war, a real people, and a real obligation to provide security for them, with constant harping of the "Vietnam template, quagmire Iraq" of popular liberal, anti war, anti American, Democratic, wild-eyed imagination. The professionals have a duty to be clear-headed and to accurately analyze and assess the situation in a professional fashion, adapting as the situation dictates. We have a duty to care for our people, their families, and the Iraqis, America must give this time, take it slow and carefully, we must not allow the Democrats, liberals, or any other anti war organization rush us either to judgment or failure. We have a real shot now, we can do this. We will do this.

Thank God for our troops, for the overall professionalism, courage and determination to get this job done despite the best efforts of congress to stop them from reaching their goals.
I think we've learned much over the past four years, about our Army, our troops, our president, the congress, and the Iraqi people.