CENTER OF GRAVITY. The consensus is that Baghdad is the center of gravity for the conflict in Iraq. The military has tried to spin this in a positive way; the battle of Baghdad is where the insurgency can be defeated. But this isn't really what's going on. Baghdad is a center of gravity, but not for the insurgency.
Carl Von Clausewitz introduced the "center of gravity" concept in On War. More or less, it refers to the source of a combatants' strength, which, if captured or destroyed, would deprive an enemy of the means to continue. It can represent anything from a battlefleet to a province to more nebulous concepts like morale and legitimacy. Were the battle of Baghdad successful, the insurgency would be deprived of Baghdad as a base of operations and presumably as a target, but it wouldn't be destroyed. Most insurgencies don't expect to slug it out on the streets of the national capital, preferring to operate in areas where central authority is weak. Baghdad can't be the center of gravity for the insurgency, and no U.S. victory in Baghdad could prove decisive in the sense of bringing about, you know, a decision.
However, Baghdad is the center of gravity for the U.S. and the Iraqi government. If the U.S. can't provide security in the capitol (and it looks like we can't), then the occupation is as done as done. Since Baghdad is the media center of Iraq, chaos there affects the rest of Iraq, the international community, and the U.S. homefront. For the Iraqi state the stakes are higher, since the attacks threaten the central government's tenuous grip on power. Noting that the war is going poorly doesn't exactly represent a brilliant insight, but it's important to understand that the battle going on in Baghdad right now is a defensive one in which the cores of the occupation and of the Iraqi government are under attack. In other words, it's rather more desperate than is being depicted.
--Robert Farley
