Austin Bay reminds us that one reason things are so difficult in Iraq is that both our enemies and our friends have good reason to believe we won't stick around long enough to finish the job. They may right.
"Phased withdrawal" of coalition forces has always been the goal. The issue is a realistic "when."The Iraqi government confronts extraordinary challenges. Are there rotten Iraqi military units? Yes — but there are also some very good ones. Do Iran and Syria support terrorists and militias? Yes. The dictators want the world to conclude that democracy is culturally and politically alien to the Middle East. They want the world to conclude, like British and French imperialists did in 1919, that Arabs can't handle democracy.
But despite the public stumbles and bloody learning curve, Maliki's government says otherwise.
Enter the James Baker and Lee Hamilton-led Iraq Study Group. It's my bet that it will produce nothing original in terms of strategic and operational thinking. It may well produce a set of policy recommendations palatable to Democrats and Republicans — in other words, consensus political cover that allows the sober and wise to continue to support Iraq's war for freedom and modernity.
James Baker was secretary of state in 1991, when the Iraqi people were consigned to the depredations of their tyrant. Baker needs to remember that, if he — an old master of Realpolitik — counsels a policy that leads to anything less than victory.
George F. Will, no supporter of the Iraq war, makes a crass but valid political point, one that will work inexorably against a victory strategy:
[B]oth parties know that, for all the arguments about whether there should be a deadline for disengagement from Iraq, the Constitution, in effect, sets a deadline for setting a deadline.Posted by Alan at November 18, 2006 09:09 AMThere will be—the Constitution is persnickety about this—a presidential election in 24 months. Republicans do not want to run in 2008 with 150,000 U.S. forces still caught in the crossfire of Iraq's sectarian strife. Democrats know that if Iraq is still aboil and the U.S. presence essentially unchanged, their 2008 presidential candidate will have to offer what their 2006 congressional candidates were not required to offer—an actual plan for dealing with the problem. And each party's nominee would dread the possibility that his or her presidency would be instantly entangled in an inherited war.