"Iraq is one family": Baghdad walls come down

[Gogf]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/middle_east_baghdad_awakenings/html/1.stm

What a huge success story the surge and awakening have been.

 

[Phlegmak]

These Iraqi alliances seem good, but how is this attributed to "the surge"?

 

[emzie]

Thankfully all the undesirable neighbours were killed or left the country out of fear of being killed.

 

[h4ppy]

These Iraqi alliances seem good, but how is this attributed to "the surge"?

The surge did a lot in the rural areas, but that weakened the insurgency over all and did at least a bit to help, even if only indirectly.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Good job though this is just one wall.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Awwwe that it's so nice that they decided to name that neighborhood after their liberators!

 

[Trajan12]

Wake me up if/when all the people who were cleansed are allowed to come back without inciting further violence. It's my understanding that a huge amount of people still haven't returned to their homes.

That, would be something.

 

[Ayatollah So]

What a huge success story the surge and awakening have been.

Isn't the Awakening movement getting targeted by the Iraqi government on trumped-up charges of illegal activities? I recently heard an American military man in the region report that he is hearing such complaints and finding that they seem to be true. That is not very encouraging.

 

[Sims2789]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/middle_east_baghdad_awakenings/html/1.stm

What a huge success story the surge and awakening have been.

Mission accomplished.

I'm fine with us declaring victory and leaving. If the view that the surge established a stable, long-term democracy myth lets us leave sooner then so be it. We shouldn't refight the Iraq war/the Bush era at home over and over again like how we refought the Vietnam war until very recently.

 

[JohnRM]

The real important story here is that the Iraqi Sunnis and Shias came together to fight Al Qaeda and to claim control of their own destiny. This is a fight that THEY won, perhaps with the help of the US, but mostly on their own. Nothing short of this kind of unity was going to make Iraq a success.