Last fall, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted a "process or tipping" in Iraq in which citizens there would become fed up with the murder and mayhem of extremists, and eventually turn to embrace democracy. His remark drew from the currently fashionable notion of "tipping points" to describe how major shifts occur in society and elsewhere.
Last month, Rumsfeld said the Jan. 30 election in Iraq had demonstrated a "tipping" of support away from the insurgency and toward the new Iraqi government.
But last week, the Pentagon leader was careful to hedge his judgment of Iraqi developments so far, speaking more in terms of ebbs and flows than decisive movement in a single direction.
"You start predicting that this is a turning point; the next thing you find is the turning point back the other way," Rumsfeld told NBC News. "It is not a straight path."
Mixed picture
Two years after the invasion, Rumsfeld's caution reflects complicated realities in Iraq, where the overall picture for the U.S. military remains very mixed, according to administration officials, military commanders and independent experts.
On one hand, the strong turnout in January's elections and signs the insurgency has weakened have given the U.S. effort a fresh sense of momentum. With the number of Iraqi security forces growing steadily and a new plan in place for Iraqi troops to take the lead in counter-insurgency operations, senior U.S. military officers have begun issuing guarded predictions about the possibility of reducing the U.S. troop level in Iraq by early next year.
On the other hand, Pentagon officials acknowledge that the gains to date fall well short of ensuring that peace and democracy will take hold in Iraq. There is widespread concern inside as well as outside the Pentagon that conditions in the country could still explode into new acts of violence and political chaos.
"Yes, we have learned from the last two years and, yes, there are signs of real progress, but I don't see the kind of definitive trends that would allow you to say victory is assured," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a defense specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Since the invasion in March 2003, major moments in Iraq such as the fall of Baghdad and capture of Saddam Hussein have often been hailed as milestones in ways that suggested a steadier, more permanent path toward success than ended up being warranted by the persistence of violence, political instability and economic dysfunction.
Long-term assessment
For this reason, Cordesman and others regard talk of tipping points as too simplistic to assess the many factors in play in Iraq. They argue further that the crossing of a historical threshold of no return often is not discerned until many months, or years, after the fact.
"It's more useful in the case of Iraq to talk of a tipping period than a tipping point," said Sen. Carl M. Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. "And at the moment, things there can still go either way. Even our leaders have acknowledged it's far from a locked-in situation."
After growing in size and deadly effect last year, Iraq's insurgency, in the view of Army Gen. George W. Casey and other U.S. field commanders, has been blunted by U.S. military offensives. Insurgent attacks are down, and the bombs that enemy fighters are burying along roads and in vehicles appear more crudely assembled -- a development that U.S. commanders attribute to the capture of some main bomb-makers in recent months. For every attack that results in casualties, another two prove ineffective, the Pentagon says.
Still, the insurgency retains sufficient ammunition, weapons, money and people to carry out on average 50 to 60 attacks a day. The bulk of them continue to occur in areas in central, western and northwestern Iraq heavily populated by Sunnis.
Senior U.S. military officers have cautioned that defeating the insurgency is likely to require a long-term struggle and depend more on politics than military force. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, reminded reporters earlier this month that insurgencies over the past century have lasted on average about nine years.
"It takes time to snuff out the insurgency," Casey said. "And also, I think you know, most insurgencies are defeated by political means rather than necessarily by military means."
Political turmoil ahead
But Iraqi politics, along with the promise of fostering a permanent peace, also carry the threat of fomenting greater instability if accommodation cannot be reached among the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. With negotiations over establishment of a new administration dragging on, the euphoria that initially followed January's elections has given way to warnings that the lack of political agreement will result in new sectarian violence and terrorist activity.
"I believe that uncertainty will almost certainly breed more violence," Army Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. officer in the Persian Gulf region, told the Senate Armed Services Committee recently.
He predicted political turmoil ahead, given the challenges this year of drafting a new constitution and electing a permanent national government. Such turmoil, he said, "will probably not allow the institutions to really get as established as we would like. So we have to be cautious in expecting that they will develop faster or more efficiently than we might expect."
In the meantime, U.S. commanders have placed added emphasis since the elections on the training of Iraqi security forces. The development of these homegrown forces has become the centerpiece of the Pentagon's exit strategy. The goal for the end of the year is to have Iraqi troops leading the fight against insurgents in most parts of the country.
But the progress of the mission has become a source of political dispute, with Democratic lawmakers calling into question the accuracy of administration assertions that 142,000 soldiers and policemen have been trained and equipped, out of a projected total of 271,000 by July 2006.
Need for economic improvements
Pentagon officials concede the figures for Iraqi policemen are less accurate than the numbers for Iraqi soldiers, and they acknowledge that few of the units fielded so far are capable of operating independently of U.S. forces. In retrospect, they say, a series of missteps were made in initial efforts to develop the Iraqi forces, including sending them into combat last spring ill-trained and poorly equipped.
But they contend solid progress is now being made in accounting for the forces, improving their training and bolstering their command structures.
With all the focus on the buildup of forces, some senior U.S. officers worry that other elements critical to defeating the insurgency will be overlooked, particularly the need for economic improvements.
"I fear, when I watch the news, that everyone is focused solely on fixing Iraqi security forces," said Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who commands the 1st Cavalry Division, which returned to Texas this month after a year in Iraq. "If this comes at the cost of not making the infrastructure improvements that need to be done, we'll create a bigger army but also a larger insurgency, which regenerates itself if you don't address the underlying grievances about basic needs not being met. People want jobs, they want their sewers fixed, they want fresh water."
Whatever the future holds, the story up to now of the U.S. occupation of Iraq suggests a number of surprises still in store.
"The experience of the last two years should make us cautious about claiming Iraq is on an irreversible course toward victory," said Peter Feaver, a political science professor who specializes in military affairs at Duke University. "To me, the remarkable thing is just how wrong everyone has been in predicting the twists and turns that have occurred so far."
