From: RAW STORY
Published: Friday September 19, 2008
A
study of the Pentagon’s satellite imagery concludes that ethnic
cleansing — not last year’s surge of U.S. military forces — is the
main factor in the reduction of violence in Iraq.
The report’s conclusion about the surge’s ineffectiveness
are supported by many Iraq experts and international organizations who
credit a population shift with the decline of sectarian violence,
especially in Baghdad, Reuters reported.
Conducted by the University of California, the study analyzed the use
of nighttime light across Baghdad and how it changed before, during and
after the surge. It’s findings show only some neighborhoods have higher
levels of output, suggesting the others had been ethnically cleansed before the surge.
“By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either
been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when
they left,” geography professor John Agnew of the University of
California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.
“Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in
Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the
surge was beginning,” said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.
In other words, ethnic violence did the job before American soldiers got the chance.
Sectarian violence between Baghdad’s neighborhoods has been documented by an independent commission that correlates with much of the report’s findings.
But FP Passport, a foreign policy blog, offered several caveats
to its conclusion. For example, the blog asks why there were also
security improvements outside the capital in places such as Anbar
province?
Republican presidential nominee John McCain has long criticized
his opponent Sen. Barack Obama for not having backed the surge, which
McCain boasts as the single factor in the reduction of violence.
CNN Security Analyst Peter Bergen disagrees.
“…[B]oth the Democrats and the Republicans have been overemphasizing
the surge. If it was just about the surge, the violence would be back
up again because the surge is over.”
In a speech last July, McCain said, “It is precisely the success of the
surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan,” but one
country has very little to do with the other, Slate.com reported.
A recent military analysis
posits that a surge of troops in Afghanistan, where rising violence has
drawn the attention of U.S. forces, will not succeed. The article
contends U.S. military leaders do not adequately understand the
country’s situation.
Which is exactly what the study of ethnic cleansing suggested about commanders in Iraq.
The first sentence of the University of California’s summary, written by co-author Thomas Gillespie, says this:
“Geographers and social scientists find it increasingly difficult to
intervene in debates about vital matters of public interest, such as
the Iraq war, because of the ideological polarization and lack of respect for empirical analysis that have afflicted US politics in recent years.” Emphasis added.
Read the entirety of the report here.
Tags: McCain, war, obama, president <BR/>