Iraq: not doing their part

Zakaria: What the Warriors Cannot Do
It's time to call Iraq's leaders to account.
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

April 2, 2007 issue - In the last weeks, the violence in Baghdad has moved from ghastly to merely grim, and we are told that the tide has turned. President Bush says the surge of U.S. troops is producing "encouraging signs." Many of his neoconservative supporters have been less circumspect. "It may well be that General [David] Petraeus is going to lead us to victory in Iraq," declared William Kristol last week. The obstacle now is apparently not in Iraq but in Washington, where Congress has been making efforts to bring American combat forces home. The president's spokesman Tony Snow describes these as recipes for "failure, not victory."

To speak of victory in Iraq might sound like a cruel joke. This is a nation that is now devastated, where 2 million people have fled, another 2 million are internal refugees, militias run large parts of the country and the government sanctions religious repression, ethnic cleansing and vigilante violence. What does "victory" mean in such circumstances?

When the president announced his new policy of a "surge" in January, I argued that it was likely to have a positive military effect. Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, is all that he has been advertised to be: an unusually smart and strategic general. His first moves in Baghdad show that. He has begun securing neighborhoods and is trying to prove to Iraqis that U.S. forces will go after both Sunni and Shiite extremists (though the latter have mostly melted away). But by his own estimation these achievements, even if they expand, are not enough. "Any student of history recognizes there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq," he said recently. "A political resolution of various differences ... of various senses that people do not have a stake in the successes of Iraq ... is crucial." The new secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, echoed this analysis, explaining that the role of the U.S. military in Iraq was to buy time for national reconciliation.

It would seem reasonable, then, to measure progress not just by neighborhoods secured and militants killed, but in political terms as well. And as it happens we have a series of benchmarks that have been set out at various points by the Bush administration and the Iraqi government.



These two measures have historically proved crucial in almost any political process that has ended a civil war. Without some kind of amnesty and prospect for rehabilitation, there is little incentive for insurgents to lay down their arms and join the political process. Last week the Sunni vice president of Iraq urged his own government to begin talks with the insurgents, a position that General Petraeus has also taken.

There are less formal benchmarks that are also not being met. Maliki was to have reshuffled his cabinet to remove members who actively fomented civil war. That has not happened. The government was to finally start spending money in Sunni areas. That has not happened. Militias were to be demobilized. Instead, one of their most notorious leaders has been released from prison and publicly embraced by Maliki.. (There will still be a need for a reduced force to fight Al Qaeda, secure Kurdistan and prevent major refugee flows.)

Announcing his new surge policy on Jan. 10, President Bush said, "I've made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people." In a sense, Congress is merely following through on the president's promise.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17778186/site/newsweek/