Great Success: Iraq Violence Plunges to Four-Year Low

The Los Angeles Times reports that violence in Iraq has declined to the lowest point in four years:

The U.S. military said Sunday that the number of attacks by militants in the last week dropped to a level not seen in Iraq since March 2004.

About 300 violent incidents were recorded in the seven-day period that ended Friday, down from a weekly high of nearly 1,600 in mid-June last year, according to a chart provided by the military.

The announcement appeared aimed at allaying fears that an uprising by militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr could unravel security gains since 28,500 additional American troops were deployed in Iraq in a buildup that reached its height in June.

Navy Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, a military spokesman, credited the decrease to a series of operations launched by the Iraqi government in the last two months to extend control over parts of the country that have been under the sway of armed Sunni Arab and Shiite militants. They include crackdowns in the southern oil hub of Basra, the northern city of Mosul and Baghdad's Sadr City district.

The late March operation in Basra triggered a fierce backlash by Sadr's militiamen in Sadr City and across the overwhelmingly Shiite south, drawing in British and American forces.

The number of attacks nationwide rose to about 850 in the week that the Basra crackdown began, according to the military's chart. The figure has ebbed and flowed since then.

Read the whole thing. The military's reporting is cautious, noting where significant security challenges remain.

Still, I can just hear all of the lefties protest. Check Spencer Ackerman, Newshoggers (it's already happening, here), or Matthew Yglesias, where I'll bet you'll see posts ripping apart the military assessments as "lies" or as abjectly denialist about the "imminent" sectarianism that will rip the country apart.

Don't believe it.

For the hard left's antiwar nihilists, war - any war - is a fiction, a right-wing manufacture to keep the racist military-industrial fascists in power.

For more on that, unsurprisingly, see Comments for Left Field, "The Right’s Neurotic Addiction to War."

Photo Credit: "Children jump and run as Iraqi troops arrive in their neighborhood to distribute food rations in the impoverished Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad. Iraqi troops poured into the Baghdad Shiite bastion of Sadr City three days ago for the first time in eight weeks, without resistance from militias who have fought deadly street battles with US forces," Los Angeles Times.