...Just as the British confused Basra with a regional center of gravity, the Bush Administration may well have compounded these problems by confusing Baghdad with the center of gravity in a national struggle for the control of political and economic space that affects every part of the country. The Iraq Study Group report had many weaknesses, but it was all too correct in nothing that official US reporting on the patterns of violence in Iraq may reflect less than a 10th of the actual struggle, and much of this violence is outside Baghdad.
Winning security control of the city and losing Iraq’s 11 other major cities and
countryside to Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic factions is not victory in any strategic sense, it is defeat. As has been discussed earlier, the minimal requirement for a successful US strategy is a relatively stable and secure Iraq, not temporary US military control of Baghdad....
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