Violence down again in Iraq

U.S. troop deaths in Iraq dropped sharply for the second consecutive month, the Pentagon announced this week. Thirty-seven Americans died in October, down from 65 in September and 84 in August. The monthly death toll was the second lowest since February 2004, when 20 troops were killed. Violence against civilians in and around Baghdad also continued to decline, with 598 attacks, down from 2,455 in January. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that in Baghdad, the presence of al Qaida in Iraq has been significantly reduced and its actions degraded. But elsewhere in the country, Petraeus said, the group remains very lethal.

Petraeus pointedly declined to address the fragile situation along Iraq’s northern border with Turkey. Turkey is threatening to invade northern Iraq, in pursuit of Kurdish separatists, unless coalition forces aggressively crack down on the militants there. The Pentagon confirmed that U.S. reconnaissance planes have been flying over the mountainous border region. We are supplying the Turks with intelligence, lots of intelligence, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

There is still a long struggle ahead in Iraq, said Frederick Kagan in The Weekly Standard. But take stock of what’s been accomplished. At the end of last year, we were headed for defeat in Iraq, and the idea that a troop surge of a few brigades could make a difference was widely ridiculed. Not anymore. The prophets of doom have lost all credibility.

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Let’s put these figures in perspective, said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. So far in 2007, 832 U.S. troops have been killed, compared to 822 in all of 2006. Besides, the recent drop in casualty figures may have less to do with progress in the war than with the way we’re now fighting it : with airstrikes rather than infantry assaults. This tactic is much safer for U.S. troops, but much more deadly for the Iraqi civilians whose hearts and minds we’re supposed to be winning.

Certainly there’s no easy military solution to the powder keg in northern Iraq, said USA Today in an editorial. If Turkey does invade, it might well spark a similar incursion by Iran in the east, at which point all bets are truly off. If the Bush administration doesn’t avert this catastrophe with some prompt and skillful diplomacy, this month’s welcome drop in U.S. troop deaths could prove a temporary aberration.