Will we "declare victory and come home?"
Washington's Worst-Kept Secret: Changes are Coming in Iraq Policy
TIME MAGAZINE
Analysis: When the U.S. elections are over, the Bush Administration will hear some advice it won't like, from a White House-backed bipartisan panel that sees the present policy as unlikely to succeed
By TONY KARON
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington's foreign policy circles that "staying the course" in Iraq is untenable. That's why much of Washington and the media is focused on the secret deliberations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, initiated by congressional Republicans and endorsed by the White House. The panel, headed by former former Secretary of State and Bush family consiglieri James Baker, will not report until after November's elections, which will avoid a serious reexamination of Iraq policy being subsumed in partisan bickering.
While the specifics of its proposals are not yet clear — or, says Baker, even finalized — the broad premise guiding those recommendations appears to be that the U.S. needs to try to salvage the best possible outcome given that the achievement of its original goals in Iraq appear increasingly unlikely. The New York Sun first reported last week that Baker's group would make clear that "victory" in Iraq, in the sense that the White House uses the term — establishing a stable democracy capable of defending itself and serving as an ally in the U.S. war on terror — is beyond reach.
Such a conclusion certainly jibes with the facts on the ground: Iraq has become a charnel house with a current average of around 100 Iraqis killed every day in rampant sectarian bloodletting, while the U.S. casualty count continues to climb at a steady clip — October 2006 is currently on track to be the third-deadliest month for U.S. troops since the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. has long recognized that the insurgency can't be eliminated by military means; instead it hoped that it could be defanged by a national reconciliation process pursued by the elected government, which would coax Sunnis away from the insurgency by dismantling Shi'ite militias and by giving them a greater political stake. At the same time, security duties would be transferred increasingly into the hands of Iraqi forces. But six months after the new government took office, the national reconciliation process is effectively stalled. And the reason American casualty figures have spiked in recent months is that U.S. troops have had to resume a greater role in security operations, particularly in and around Baghdad. So loud has the chorus of doubt in Washington grown over whether the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will be able to take the necessary steps to reverse the sectarian tide — such as curbing the Shi'ite militias to whose political leaders he remains beholden — that President Bush on Monday had to phone Maliki to reassure him that he still had U.S. support. (That may have been a comfort to Maliki, since the Iraqi capital has also been awash with rumors of a U.S.-backed coup that would replace Maliki with a "strongman" capable of getting the job done.)
With no "milestone" event such as an election on which to pin hopes for a turnaround, Washington's bipartisan search for alternatives grows more frantic. Baker, in his public comments, has hinted at the need to pursue a damage-control formula with more modest goals that would essentially abandon the Bush Administration's dreams of a "New Middle East" and instead draw some of the regional power players least-loved by Washington into stabilizing Iraq. He has made clear his belief that the U.S. would be more prudent in aiming for something less than democracy in the Middle East, and the broad themes reportedly being considered by the panel are "containment" and "stability," catchwords more traditionally associated with the "realist" school of U.S. foreign policy of which Colin Powell was the only consistent advocate in the top ranks of the Bush Administration. There will be things in his panel's report that the Administration won't like, Baker has said, and the former Secretary of State has made a point of emphasizing the need for the U.S. to seek agreement with Syria and Iran on steps to stabilize Iraq. "It's not appeasement to talk to your enemies," he has said, in an apparent rebuke to the current administration's refusal to have direct talks with both countries, in addition to North Korea..
The Iraq Study Group's report, of course, won't in itself set policy, and White House spokesman Tony Snow has warned (a bit defensively) that the President has no plans to "outsource" Iraq policy to the group. Nonetheless, its bipartisan and foreign policy credentials make it very likely to shape the parameters of debate on Iraq.
Baker's panel won't offer a magic bullet, for the simple reason that there isn't one. Even if the Bush Administration did swallow its rhetoric and deal with Tehran and Damascus, achieving a consensus on the distribution of power in Iraq between Iran and the Arab regimes would be a Herculean feat of diplomacy — and the political price set by Iran, in particular, might be beyond what the Administration is willing to pay. A phased withdrawal of troops carries major risks; so does partitioning Iraq or turning to a new "strongman" (the latter two options are not reportedly under consideration by the panel, but do arise in Washington debates). Each option carries as many, if not more, perils than prospects of success. But the very fact that the discussion in Washington has reached this point is a clear sign of an emerging consensus that a failed policy must be changed. |
