General James T. Conway, the Marine in charge of security in Iraq's Anbar province the Commandant of the Marine Corps [that'll teach me to pay attention to names when writing posts at 1am. I knew this], has said that US forces there could hand over control to the Iraqi government as soon as Monday, and is lauding the reduction in violence in the province. The general says that remaining US troops in the province will concentrate on bringing Sunnis and Shiites together. But the handover was intended to happen last month, though a sharp uptick in violence there delayed the event, along with a convenient sandstorm. Veteran and blogger Brandon Freidman documented that increase back in May.

 And wrote that:

While I do not profess to know exactly what change in the political climate precipitated this specific spike in violence, I do know that General Petraeus was correct when he said that the placidity in Anbar Province was reversible.  What most have failed to realize thus far is that, while al Qaeda is deeply unpopular in Anbar, U.S. forces are equally despised.  So it seems that those who've repeatedly used Anbar's relative peacefulness as a sign of impending U.S. success in Iraq know little about counterinsurgency and less about Iraq.

Success in Iraq is something that will be brought about by Iraqis--not the American military.  As long as we're there, the best we can hope for is extreme violence broken by periodic lulls--such as what we've witnessed in Anbar over the past seven months.  As long we remain in Iraq, the violence will remain cyclical.  It will rise and fall, contingent on the latest deal we've cut with tribal leaders or the latest deal that someone has brokered within the Iraqi government.  But our military will never completely solve this inherently Iraqi problem.  We're watching that unfortunate fact unfold before us in Anbar this month.

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