Redstate

I Have A Bad Feeling About This

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have finally met. But what to make of the meeting? (Read on.)

President Bush said Thursday the United States will speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces but assured Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Washington is not looking for a "graceful exit" from a war well into its fourth violent year.

Under intensifying political pressure at home, the American and Iraqi leaders came together for a hastily arranged summit to explore how to stop escalating violence that is tearing Iraq apart and eroding support for Bush's war strategy.

With Bush hoping to strengthen his Iraqi counterpart's fragile government, the tensions that flared when their opening session was abruptly cancelled Wednesday evening were not apparent when they appeared before reporters after breakfast Thursday.

" I appreciate the courage you show during these difficult times as you lead your country," Bush told al-Maliki after nearly two and a half hours of talks. "He's the right guy for Iraq." It was their third face-to-face meeting since al-Maliki took power about six months ago.

"There is no problem," declared al-Maliki.

But there is curiosity--at least on my part. What makes the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government think at this point in time that the handover can now be completed on a faster basis than before? What has changed on the ground in Iraq to allow this? If nothing has changed, then isn't this just all a reaction to the midterm elections in the United States? And if so, is the domestic political situation being allowed to trump the current security situation as the Administration and the Iraqi government make their calculations? Something to worry about.

Oh, and this just annoys me:

The two agreed that Iraq should not be partitioned along sectarian lines into semi-regions for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Bush said.

"The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," the president said. "I agree."

If the Iraqi people genuinely don't want their country to be partitioned, then their wishes should govern. But a potentially good idea has pretty much been strangled at birth without being given a public airing.

And then there is this:

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel's deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission's debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, "there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached."

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

Are we going to pull back the brigades as an equivalent number of Iraqi brigades are fully trained and equipped? No one knows. And as discussed above, no one knows whether the brigades are going to be pulled back to bases in Iraq or brought home. I suppose we should wait until the final report is issued, but my own personal preference is that we send more troops right now. Another idea that may have been stranged at birth, though it is to be hoped that people like John McCain will be able to influence events enough to bring the idea of more troops to the fore.