I don't get out much on school nights, but I was asked to emcee an event yesterday evening to honor Medal of Honor recipients on Capitol Hill. And I ran into retired General Jack Keane on the way into the Russell Building — he's the former Army Vice Chief of Staff who's among the intellectual architects of the "surge" — a term he hates. He's been on the show several times. He said he was just back from another visit to Iraq and that, while it was early days yet, there were encouraging reports from Baghdad. I asked if the reduction in violence wasn't largely a function of the decision by the Shia militias to lay low and wait things out. "Exactly what we wanted them to do," he replied. "Much of their leadership has headed east and south (Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mehdi Army is reported to be in Iran, and by "south" I suspect he means Basra), the guys in Baghdad have orders to stand down, not to fight the Americans, which has made it possible for us to got into neighborhoods where we've never been able to sustain activity before. We could have fought our way into Sadr City if we had to, but nobody wanted to do that. We arrested a few dozen to show that we were there (there's suspicion that those arrested are renegade elements of Sadr's forces and that he's using American troops to eliminate internal rivals). But it's a tactical mistake on their part. By the time they try to resume operations, we — the US and the Iraqis — will be established in those neighborhoods and if we can keep it quiet, relatively quiet, we'll have eliminated a lot of the cause of their support."
It's so tempting to believe that things are going better — just this morning I heard the BBC report on the 'dramatic' reduction in violence in Baghdad over the past month — but it's also very diffficult to believe that this time, really, not like all those other times, we've actually turned a corner that doesn't lead into a blind alley. I couldn't book a show right there and then on the steps of the Russell Building, but we'll ask General Keane and a skeptic to come on to take your questions soon.