IRAQ THE SURGE IS WORKING

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Date published: 4/3/2007

PHILADELPHIA--Of the many problems in Iraq, one of the most frustrating has been the Bush administration's belief that democracy is the prerequisite to liberalism. It is not. Security, not democracy, is the sine qua non of a liberal society. Without it, elections are useless, or worse.

While the administration labored to deliver Iraqi democracy, it seemed to believe that security would take care of itself once the purple thumbs were counted.

The Baghdad Security Plan (commonly known as the "surge") is the administration's first serious attempt to grapple with security in Iraq. The results so far are not discouraging.

The Baghdad Security Plan went into effect Feb. 14, as Gen. David Petraeus assumed command over coalition forces in Iraq. The idea was to push five additional U.S. brigades and nine Iraqi battalions into neighborhoods in and around Baghdad, establishing secure points and radiating security outward.

Some results were seen almost immediately. In the first two weeks of the plan, bomb attacks decreased 20 percent and insurgents were being rolled up by the dozen. The number of bodies of apparently murdered people in Baghdad dropped from 1,222 in December to 954 in January and 494 in February. The Iraqi government stepped up its training of troops to the point at which it was minting 7,500 new soldiers every five weeks, most of whom were being used to swell Iraq army units already in Baghdad.

The news was not all good. Al-Qaida forces pushed back, staging an attack that nearly killed Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi. During the first week of March, al-Qaida kidnapped and killed 14 Iraqi police officers.

As conditions improved in Baghdad, insurgents moved their fight to the outer provinces. On March 1, they mounted a major attack in Amiriyah, a village south of Fallujah, with a force of several hundred. Iraqi regulars there managed to hold them off until U.S. air and ground support arrived.

On March 6, coordinated car bombs in the Babil province city of Hillah killed more than 115 and wounded about 200 Shiite pilgrims. The same day, 300 al-Qaida fighters stormed a prison in Mosul, freeing 140 suspected terrorists held there. Diyala province, in particular, has become a refuge for insurgents; Petraeus has deployed an additional 700 U.S. troops there to prevent al-Qaida from taking root.

Date published: 4/3/2007

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