Must be a slow news day after reading this post.

I don't know that things are capable of revving back up to the levels of 6-12 months ago, but...is it worth noting that, after the highly-touted best-month-ever/only-13-US soldiers-killed month of July, August already has 7?

An awful lot of McCain's campaign vis a vis Iraq (which he's got much of the press to swallow whole) is that Iraq is irrevocably headed toward victorious peace. It won't take much upsurge in casualty numbers to make that the foreign policy equivalent of "the recession's over/we grew 1.7% in the second quarter".

"...and the next few months may tell us whether, in the end, it's going to work."
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OMG, Kevin now suffers from Friedman Derangement Syndrome. What's next, we need to go door to door and slam a few Muslims up against the wall?

Muqtada al-Sadr has been genuinely the only leader of any faction, including the US, committed to keeping the peace for at least the past two years.

Maybe Muqtada al-Sadr is the only leader of any faction that genuinely cares about stopping the wanton killing of men, women and children that began with the US invasion of Iraq. It is easy to understand why it is so difficult to believe that, since no other leader, American or Iraqi, with the exception of al-Sistani, cares at all about the human toll the US invasion started.

Even wondering if Muqtada al-Sadr is due credit for the reduction of violence in Iraq is traitorous to conservatives, who think of him as the enemy of the US in Iraq. Mr. Drum's pragmatic analysis defies their slander.

Or maybe al Sadr has agreed to keep the peace long enough to get the U.S. to feel good and leave? If Nir Rosen is right, then Iraq is close to 80% Shi'ite due to the exile and killings of Sunnis, up from around 60% when the war began. What is the actual evidence that they intend to honor a unity government?

Maybe al-Sadr sees a chance to take control through the political process, and the cease-fire has been part of his effort to prepare for the October elections.

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Or maybe the country has been ethnically cleansed to the point that warring factions don't fight over territory, and Baghdad is so walled off that they don't see each other much. Which suggests we could just leave and nothing much would change.

If Harry and Nancy and their gang had had their way, Iraqis would still be destroying each other.

If Harry and Nancy had had their way, we wouldn't have dropped a trillion on creating an armed camp, meanwhile destabilizing the middle east, ruining our own army and killing thousands of our own troops and hundreds of thousands of iraqis. Not to mention letting Bin Laden get away.

The prospect of electoral gains if even remotely free an fair elections were held must have been a powerful incentive for both Arab Sunni and followers of al-Sadr. The more it looks like these elections are not forthcoming (combined with US backed efforts by the government to consolidate power) erodes this. On top of this, there is the weakening of Kurdish parties to cooperate when the status of Kirkuk looks to be further than even to being resolved. You might recall that these are precisely the problems that the surge was advertised as providing space for.

Maybe its the fact that the British cut a deal with him in Basra and stuck with the deal even when Badr fighters ("Iraqi army") needed their help... badly. He just may have learned that white people can be trusted to keep their word when they promise not to fight. At least, as long as they are outnumbered of course.

Maybe he knows that Tehran has shown it will deal with him respectfully come the American victory parades. And as Tehran goes, so goes the council for the Islamic revolution.

Maybe he knows he has a huge stable base because he is renting out the homes of the Sunni families his gangs uhh... helped relocate. Homes, jobs not counting corpses at the ministry of health, security... his neighborhoods would be the envy of anyone who has ever lived in a FEMA trailerpark let alone the middle of a civil war.

Maybe he knows he doesn`t have much to fight for except some airconditioned ceremonial room in the greenzone.

You know, this would as good a time as any to point out that militarily speaking "the surge" is of course what is known in milspeak as a "withdrawal". I am not saying and that it isn`t the right move and that US forces aren`t awesome and all that, WHuuuHaaa! But if you pull out forces from places from all over the country to try and control at least Baghdad and the rulers of the green zone... that technically is a withdrawal.

So Sadr has enough cards to fight to keep them, including fighting his own to keep them in line. But what cards do Sunnis have to show for their sacrifices, and more importantly, who do they have to keep even a few of the pissed of among them from blowing shit up. They don`t need to be powerfull, they just need to bomb the right mosque. There are no more reporters and doctors left to count the bodies the way some brave people did after the golden mosque bombing.

Or maybe I have just been watching way to much generation kill.

All the more reason to bring 'em on home. The idea that we know all these competing factions well enough to choose sides wisely, and not get bitten in the ass 5 years hence, is the height of arrogance.

It's a strategy that seldom works, even with a good President.

When Bush or Obama stops paying off Sunni sheiks with billions of our dollars, that's the end of the "Sunni Awakening." Sadr might be tired of having his people killed by a bully military umpteen times stronger than his, or maybe he sees light at the end of the tunnel as far as US troops leaving. Who knows? When the US leaves, Iraq will revert to Iraqi culture.

"Maybe he was afraid that if he kept up the violence the U.S. Army would eventually lose patience and crush him."

oh my god. sounds like, for all the reasoned and liberal critiques of this whole disastrous adventure, somewhere deep within the Drum there lurks the spirit of a conservative, an uquestioning belief in the irresistable power of the US military. Are you suggesting, Kevin, that your boys have been taking it easy all these years, kicking their heels in the desert; are they only now beginning to "lose patience", and preparing to stir themselves and crush the Iraqi upstarts once and for all?

Or, as I have maintained for a while, the surge is only as successful as al Sadr allows it to be.

I think the reason Sadr has been so quiet is not because he fears the U.S. Army, but because he realizes that he's lost ground to Maliki and his Dawa party and SIIC allies, and that his best best for power is via the upcoming elections. Which, if Lynch is to be believed (and he's certainly done his homework) are looking less and less likely by the month. Without those elections, the Sunnis tribes are unlikely to continue holding out for their piece of the pie, and who knows what Sadr will do. I can't say he's any stronger militarily than he was two years ago (and by most accounts, he's weaker) but what does that mean when members of JAM can't get elected?

And then there's Kirkuk...but that's another blog post I suppose.