Politically, that is...the end result of The Surge.
It is pretty clear that the surge worked as intended. Hell, it was clear months ago (the dirty secret, of course, was that the surge started way before it was announced). Violence? Way, way down. Political reconciliation? Going in fits and starts. Well, that is not 100% true as politicial reconciliation is going much better between Iraqis (as is Iraqi provincal control) out in the hinterlands. Much like the politicans in DC that believe that they are the axis upon which the world revolves, policy makers and analysts back in the States seem to use "reconciliation" to only speak of movement at the Iraqi national level.
In many ways the Surge has been too successful. I'm not sure that FM 3-24 covers the following situation:
Violence in Iraq is ticking back up in certain areas of the country - particularly where there is local Iraqi control. In these areas of the country there remains a healthy number of bad dudes and other assorted psychos. In the past Coalition Forces had the freedom to manuever, politically, to do what needed to be done to take care of the problem. Detain, kill, snatch, grab, whatever. In many of these provinces and other areas where we have "known knowns" (in the words of Rummy) the security operations now have to be pushed through the Iraqi political wickets. Suffice to say that the Iraqis are not always the best partners...CF coordinate in good faith on the one hand and on the other the Iraqis make sure that the dude(s) that we're after bug out in plenty of time to avoid capture, death etc. There are certainly ways to mitigate this (and they are being employed, of course) but trying to pacify restive areas where the local political class is disinterested at best and wholly complicit at worst is sort of like using a shovel to throw water back at the incoming tide.
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Interesting, but not surprising. When I worked at State Dept with some of the Reconstruction & Stabilization folks the common refrain was that spreading democracy and ensuring stability don't generally go hand-in-hand. We in the US seem to make the mistake of assuming that others will follow our lead and put checks in place for corruption, and establish transparent, above-boards gov't. You only have to look at Africa to see that it's a model not easily obtained.
(Perhaps not hard to see why Saddam's regime, while horrendous, kept the country stable...) Democracy and stability - not easy to attain together....
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