It's April Fool's Day, and the country is consumed by news that President Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod. What little news there is out of Iraq seems to be bad news. The New York Times reports that Iraqi militants are showing "new boldness" in their campaign of terror, which "like bubbles that indicate fish beneath still water, suggest the potential danger, all the more perilous now because the American troops who helped to pacify Iraq are leaving."
The paper does not report that U.S. fatalities in March hit an all-time low with nine Americans killed in Iraq. Just four of those deaths were caused by the enemy. Four Americans killed out of a force of some 140,000 troops. But rather than report on the damage inflicted on the insurgency by U.S. arms and strategy and its salutary effect on American casualties, the New York Times is babbling on about fish and bubbles. The Associated Press doesn't even have a story on the number that I can find, and Reuters runs a story that doesn't even hit 200 words. Meanwhile, Tom Ricks had a post up yesterday titled "Iraq: The Unraveling." In December 2006, it was unimaginable that U.S. forces would be averaging one KIA a week just two years later, yet here we are and most of the media is indifferent, while Ricks calls it an "unraveling."
In fairness, Ricks is rightfully concerned about the increasingly tense relationship between the Sunni Sons of Iraq and the Shiite government, but his concern hinges on "how things could fall apart if U.S. troops are withdrawn without more sustainable political deals." With casualties where they are now, shouldn't Ricks then be urging a slower, conditions-based withdrawal? At this rate it would take fifty years for American casualties to double. Is it really worth jeopardizing everything that's been gained just to get U.S. troops out a few months earlier?
