ARTICLE: 'Watch The Sunni Tribes,' By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, August 29, 2007

Good piece of reporting/analysis by Friedman, highlighting the fragile success in the anti-AQI effort (fragile in the sense that helping the Sunni boot jihadists doesn't make them love either us or the Shiia). This raises a question of lock-in: How do we lock in the success of Kurdistan plus the suppression of AQI while subtly removing ourselves from the Sunni-Shia tension so that the central government steps up while both the Saudis and Iranians meddle to no too-destructive ends (I don't expect either to stop meddling, I just want enough sense of limits to emerge so the nascent Iraqi government can find some heightened legitimacy in its wobbly-legged first few months of seemingly operating without an overt and heavy US footprint--something they want to succeed on many levels I shouldn't have to explain). You might be tempted to assume that lengthening the surge cures all, but that is a huge and ahistorical assumption. The surge, to the extent it works across the three wars, creates its own peaking dynamics where, if we're unresponsive to expectations created, we may well step past the reassurance zone into triggering a resurgent anti-occupational rage. The neat coincidence of AQI's overreach last year and our surge strategy of aligning with Sunni sheiks should not be assumed to constitute a get-to-stay-in-Iraq-at-this-level-card ad infinitum. A big part of the surge's strategic charm is to create the leaving space that allows us to shift from direct action to advisory, which is inevitable and right , and if that discussion sends you foaming to your keyboard, then you need to remind yourself of Lawrence's admonitions about the half-life of occupying forces. "Stay the course" is a political slogan, not COIN doctrine, which is closer to "complete the journey as fast as possible but no faster." Because, there are more clocks running than just the ones Friedman listed: some related to the mechanics of our military, others to the mechanics of the world and globalization's advance.