To the Editors (John Hagan, Joshua Kaiser, and Anna Hanson write): Americans are inclined to remember their nation’s wars victoriously. “Let it be remem- bered,” President Barack Obama told the Minneapolis American Legion veterans of the Vietnam War on August 30, 2011, “that you won every major battle of that war.” 1 He repeated this message on May 28, 2012, during the commemoration ceremony of the ªftieth anniversary of this war at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 2 How soon might we hear talk of winning the major battles in Iraq? Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey Friedman, and Jacob Shapiro (hereafter Biddle et al.) caution that “[t]he decline of violence in Iraq in 2007 does not mean that the war was necessar- ily a success.” 3 Their implication, however, is that the war was not necessarily a failure either. Biddle et al. write that the 2007 drop in violence from 2006 was a “remarkable re- versal.” They ask, “What caused this turnaround?” (p. 7). Their answer is that the United States devised a strategy that stopped the violence in Iraq with a “synergistic” combination of the U.S. troop surge and the U.S. subsidized Sunni Awakening that “stood up” the Sons of Iraq (SOI). Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq Correspondence John Hagan, Joshua Kaiser, and Anna Hanson Jon R. Lindsay and Austin G. Long Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman, and Jacob N. Shapiro Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq John Hagan is John D. MacArthur Professor at Northwestern University and Codirector of the Center on Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation. He received the 2009 Stockholm Prize in Criminol- ogy and the 2012 Law and Society Association Harry J. Kalven Prize. Joshua Kaiser is a J.D.-Ph.D. student in sociology and law at Northwestern University. Anna Hanson is a Ph.D. student in sociology at North- western University. Jon R. Lindsay is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conºict and Coop- eration. He was a military ofªcer responsible for tribal engagement and information operations in Western Iraq with Special Operations Task Force West. Austin G. Long is Assistant Professor at the School of Inter- national and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He was a civilian analyst ªrst with Multinational Force–Iraq’s Task Force 134/Detention Operations and then with Multinational Force–West headquarters. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reºect those of any U.S. govern- ment entity. The authors thank Chris Conner, Gian Gentile, Brendan Green, Carrie Lee, Carter Malkasian, Douglas Ollivant, Roger Petersen, Joshua Rovner, and Paul Staniland for comments on earlier drafts. Stephen Biddle is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jeffrey A. Friedman is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. Jacob N. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. 1. Barack Obama, speech given at the Ninety-third Annual Conference of the American Legion, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 30, 2011. 2. Barack Obama, speech given at the commemoration ceremony of the ªftieth anniversary of the Vietnam War at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C., May 28, 2012. 3. Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman, and Jacob N. Shapiro, “Testing the Surge: Why Did Vio- lence Decline in Iraq in 2007?” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Summer 2012), pp. 7–40. Subse- quent references to this article appear parenthetically in the text. International Security, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Spring 2013), pp. 173–198 © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 173