Redstate

By BrooksRob Posted in National Security — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

John Burns, an extraordinarily good reporter from the New York Times, seems to agree with the Iraq policy I've been advocating for months, since before my first RedState post (I'll provide link in comment below, because I don't know how to provide link in filtered html format). It seems somewhat commonsensical, yet, perhaps due to partisanship and its resulting polarization, seems to be mostly overlooked. We need to (1) assure the Iraqis of our commitment to full support as long as they start and continue to make reasonable progress toward benchmarks, particularly in political reconciliation, and (2) make this FULL support contingent upon such progress, with the clear message that without that progress we will scale back our objectives and role, limiting it to fighting al Qaeda and preventing regional war and perhaps limiting foreign infiltration, but largely disengaging from their sectarian civil war per se.

By the way, for anyone who discounts Burns' analysis and opinion simply because he's with the NYT, you are probably unfamiliar with his work. He's first rate.

Below is from Hugh Hewitt's interview of Burns on 7/30/07 (bolding and italics mine). Burns had already noted substantial military progress, and Hewitt turned to the issue of political reconciliation.

HH: Now another metric is what the political elite of a country says off the record. And you have those conversations with the Maliki government, with the opposition, with the people in parliament, etc. What do you hear from those conversations, John Burns? Are they beginning to think that it is possible to see a functioning government and a multi-party system that relies on other than guns?

JB: No, I would say that’s probably the most depressing or discouraging aspect of the entire situation. I think it’s probably fair to say that the Iraqi political leaders, Sunni, Shiia, Kurd in the main, are somewhat further apart now than they were six months ago. In other words, the Bush administration’s hope that the military surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred. Indeed, the gulf between the Shiite and Sunni leaders in the government is probably wider than it has ever been. There’s a great deal of recrimination. There’s hardly a day when the Sunnis do not, as they did again today, threaten to withdraw from the government altogether. There’s virtually no progress on the key benchmarks, as the Bush administration calls them, matters like a comprehensive oil law that will settle the issue of how oil revenues, which account for 90% of government revenues here, will in future be divided and spent between the various communities, and many other issues, eighteen of them, benchmarks identified by the Congress, there’s very little progress on those benchmarks. Where there is some progress is at the grass roots level, some progress, though we’re beginning to see tribal leaders, in particular, in some of the most heavily congested war areas, beginning to stand up and say they’ve had enough of it, and to volunteer to put forth their young men, either to join the Iraqi police or army, or to join in tribal auxiliaries, or levees if you will. That’s probably the most encouraging political sign. But at the Baghdad level, unfortunately, the United States still does not have an effective political partner.

HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal that’s written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do you believe that’s an accurate argument?

JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn’t you, that the threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we’ve already seen, would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there’s a conundrum here. There’s a paradox. That’s to say the more that the Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They’re much more inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going, there’s absolutely no…and we’re going to have to settle this by a civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now? For example, to give you only one isolated exception, why should the Shiite leadership, in their view, make major concessions about widening the entry point for former Baathists into the government, into the senior levels of the military leadership, that’s to say bringing in high ranking Sunnis into the government and the army and the police, who themselves, the Sunnis, are in the main former stalwarts of Saddam’s regime. Why would the Shiites do that if they believe that in the end, they’re going to have to fight a civil war? This is not to reprove people in the Congress who think that the United States has spent enough blood and treasure here. It’s just a reality that that’s the way this debate seems to be being read by many Iraqi politicians.

HH: Would a, John Burns, a contrary approach yield the also counterintuitive result that if Congress and the United States said we’re there for two or three more years at this level, would that assist the political settlement, in your view, coming about?

JB: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that is probably not, and that’s something that General Casey and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker now, General Petraeus’ partner, if you will, are very wary of. They understand that there has to be something of a fire lit under the feet of the Iraqi leaders. It’s a paradox, it’s a conundrum, which is almost impossible to resolve. Now I think the last thing that you need is an Iraqi leadership which is already inclined to passivity on the matters, the questions that seem to matter most in terms of a national reconciliation here, the last thing they need is to be told, in effect, the deadline has been moved back three years. I would guess the way, if you will, to vector all of this would be to find some sort of solution, indeed it was the benchmark solution, which would say to them if you come together and you work on these benchmarks, then you will continue to have our support. But it seems to me that the mood in Congress has moved beyond that. The mood in Congress, as I read it from here, at least those who are leading the push for the withdrawal, are not much interested anymore in incremental progress by the Iraqi government. They’ve come to the conclusion that this war is lost, that no foreseeable movement by the Iraqi leaders will be enough to justify the continued investment of lives and dollars here by the United States, and that it’s time to pull out. And of course, you can make a strong argument to that effect.

(end of interview transcript)

Michael E. O’Hanlon also makes relevant points. O'Hanlon is with the Brookings Institution (liberal institution, but O'Hanlon seems level-headed on the situation in Iraq and strategy implications, and I think he's a self-described strong-defense, Sam Nunn type Democrat). On April 11 he wrote the following on Politico.com ("What Would the Iraq Study Group Do?") about the Iraq Study Group's recommendation to set a goal (per Baker's understanding) or a hard deadline (per Hamilton's understanding) of pulling out all our combat troops by early 2008. As he points out, It makes no sense to say that we'll use the leverage of our continued support (and the potential discontinuation thereof) to pressure the Iraqi's to make necessary progress but to tell them that we're leaving regardless of whether or not they make such progress. From O'Hanlon's 4/11 op-ed:

First, the Baker-Hamilton commission's recommendation on this point seems internally inconsistent with the overall logic of the rest of the Study Group's thinking. The authors of the report called for using American leverage to induce the Iraqis to make better decisions on building political consensus across sectarian lines and on governing their country honestly and effectively. According to this line of thinking, good decisions would result in continued American economic and diplomatic support, while bad choices would lead to a cutoff of aid and a general reduction in the U.S. commitment.

Except, that is, on the matter of American combat forces -- our greatest source of leverage. According to the Study Group's recommendations, our troops would return home nearly entirely regardless of what the Iraqis did.

Second, and more importantly, a binding deadline to get most forces home would seem inconsistent with any hope of stabilizing Iraq. Even if the Iraqis make good decisions on governance and reconciliation, they will not be in a position to hold their own country together within a year. Their institutions, starting with the army and police, simply will not be strong enough to handle the challenge. If American main combat forces departed, sectarian paranoias would probably lead Iraqi security forces to fracture once violent events occur next year (as they surely will).

In his 7/30 op-ed, noted on mbecker908's post a few days ago, O'Hanlon describes military progress, but notes that:

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

For elaboration on why the policy I advocate makes more sense than what most Dems are advocating and than what the Bush Administration and most Republicans are advocating, see link from my April 29 post (my first on RedState) in comment below.