Is violence level wrong way to measure Iraq progress?

by Frank James

At today's press briefing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, the general wanted to disabuse reporters from using the level of violence as the "metric" in figuring out whether the present military surge is working or not.

That's the wrong measurement, according to Pace since Iraqi insurgents have a "vote" as he put it, in what the levels of violence will be there.

GEN. PACE: Well, I think, first of all if you try to define this in terms of level of violence, you've really put yourself on the wrong metric. It isn't about X number today, Y number tomorrow, because the enemy gets a chance to vote in that. And he will take a look at what you're measuring and try to defeat that measurement, so to speak. What we're trying to do is to get for the Iraqi government enough space inside of which that they can do the good governance that they promised that they will do with regard to the laws that they're going to pass and the economics. The metric really should be for Iraqi citizens, do they feel better about their lives today than they did yesterday? And do they think they're going to feel better about their lives tomorrow than they do today? If they do, and if they see that their country is moving forward without regard to the specific instances of violence, that they feel better about where they are and where they're going, then the security environment is providing what it should be providing, which is a level of security inside of which their governance can function. If you had zero violence and people were not feeling good about their future, where are you? So it's not about levels of violence. It's about progress being made in fact, in the minds of the Iraqi people, so that they have confidence in their government in the way forward.

The military and Bush Administration have been stressing lately that the surge isn't necessarily about reducing the staggering levels of violence in Iraq as much as it's about providing enough space for the Iraqi government to build momentum that will allow the government to move forward of its own inertia.

But the obvious problem is that it is difficult to compartmentalize progress and violence the way
Pace and other U.S. policymakers are attempting to do.

Perhaps the most basic role of any democratic government hoping to win the confidence of its people is to protect them. President Bush himself often talks about that being his most important duty.

So there is a definite interplay between the level of violence and confidence of the Iraqi people. All insurgents in every insurgency have known this. The insurgents in Iraq know this, which is why they daily try through bombings and other violence to demonstrate to Iraqi citizens that neither the Iraqi or U.S. government can protect them.

So while Pace may want to separate the notion of progress from that of violence, since the insurgents can always up the violence, they're really linked. That's a trick bag U.S. policymakers will find extremely difficult to escape.

And there are probably a lot of Iraqis who would disagree with Pace to say that if the U.S. and Iraqi government's could achieve zero violence in Iraq, Iraqis would feel a whole lot more confident in their government and their future.