The Shiite-dominated government has been incapable of forging a reconciliation pact with the Sunni minority. Sunnis are as mistrustful, and fearful, as ever of the Shiites’ dominance, not least because of the way the Shiite regime has let its own interior ministry forces terrorize many Sunni neighborhoods under the guise of establishing security.
The American troop escalation in 2007 provided some short-term gains by imposing iron-fist security measures in Baghdad and imprisoning more than 25,000 Iraqis, most of them without charges. But the “surge”’s success was contingent on political gains among Iraqis. Those gains have not been achieved.
The Bush administration has been content to point to the lower death tallies of late 2007 and early 2008. The tallies are, in fact, lower than they were in late 2006 and early 2007. But they are merely a return to the tallies of 2005, when, even then, American generals were characterizing the situation as a war.
