Douglas Macgregor on Iraq

The author, retired Army colonel decorated Gulf War vet, Pentagon advisor until 2004, and writer for the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, interviewed in Harper's:

2. Has the “surge” in troop levels played an important role here as well?

Not really. Where once there was one country called Iraq, there are now three emerging states: one Kurdish, one Sunni, and one Shiite. More than two years of sectarian violence have left districts in and around Baghdad completely Sunni or completely Shiite, and that has significantly reduced violence in those districts and resulted in fewer bodies in the streets. This new strategic reality, combined with huge cash payments to the Sunni insurgent enemy, is what has given U.S. forces a respite from the chaos of the last four years. The introduction of a few thousand additional troops into Baghdad’s neighborhoods was never going to result in any kind of strategic sea change.