Iraq: The war there didn’t end, we just are terminating our participation in it
Reading Joel Wing’s roundup of violence stats from Iraq, and thinking about today’s bombing and yesterday’s massacre of 22 Shiite pilgrims, I began to wonder if the U.S. withdrawal from the war is succeeding — that is, not ending the war, but simply decoupling from it. According to Wing, even as no American troops were ...
Reading Joel Wing's roundup of violence stats from Iraq, and thinking about today's bombing and yesterday's massacre of 22 Shiite pilgrims, I began to wonder if the U.S. withdrawal from the war is succeeding -- that is, not ending the war, but simply decoupling from it. According to Wing, even as no American troops were killed in Iraq last month, the upward trend in violence increased. Here is the average daily death count:
Reading Joel Wing’s roundup of violence stats from Iraq, and thinking about today’s bombing and yesterday’s massacre of 22 Shiite pilgrims, I began to wonder if the U.S. withdrawal from the war is succeeding — that is, not ending the war, but simply decoupling from it. According to Wing, even as no American troops were killed in Iraq last month, the upward trend in violence increased. Here is the average daily death count:
April: 7.1
May: 8.1
June: 9.4
July: 8.0
Aug: 10.2
Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1
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