We Can Work It Out

While Dems Wish and the G.O.P. Hopes, 
There Might Still Be a Way Out of Iraq

So here’s the situation: House Democrats want a time table for American withdrawal from Iraq while Senate Democrats want they call a “year of progress” on Iraq. Meantime, Senate Republicans want quarterly progress reports about Iraq — while the White House offers up glossy brochures and a website as the U.S. plan for victory in Iraq. Is it any wonder that the American people — who now know the president lied to them repeatedly about this costly bloodshed — have lost faith in George W. Bush, his party and his war, without gaining confidence in the opposition? Both sides are squandering the opportunity for a decent, honorable and constructive conclusion to the war — because they won’t face the realities of the situation with even a shred of honesty. 

President Bush’s recent speech on the war continued his awful record of dishonesty — especially with his exaggerated claims about the Iraqi role in the battle of Tal Afar and his claim that the Iraqi armed forces are well on their way to self-sufficiency. It was just two months ago that his own commanding officer testified in the Senate that after two years of supposed training, only one of a hundred Iraqi battalions is capable of operating on its own. If the general spoke truthfully, how many decades would the Iraqis need before they could operate on their own? 

Worse, the president failed to admit what every officer and expert knows: the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein has turned into an occupation that is provoking resistance among the Sunni Arabs and attracting jihad fighters from all over the region. Even Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and a supporter of the war, admits that “the hard truth is that our large military presence in Iraq is increasingly part of the problem” — although he also says we must maintain troops there as “the only guarantor against chaos.” 

Those remarks reflect a reality that many leading Democrats, particularly those who have supported the war, like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, have been reluctant to confront; but while Biden is beginning to speak about what is wrong, he and his Democratic colleagues remain as clueless as the president about what to do.

In a speech last week, Biden proposed a complex, four-part solution that includes a contact group of allied nations to encourage cooperation among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, a better Iraqi civil administration, a more effective training regime for Iraqi military units, and a more effective counter-insurgency strategy; this is mostly wishful thinking — mostly a more long-winded version of Lieberman’s usual happy talk. 

Senator John Kerry, who has often proved how hard it is for him to think or speak clearly about Iraq ever since last year’s presidential campaign, hasn’t made much progress either. He wants a schedule, too: “a target schedule by which you begin to turn over provinces, by which you specifically begin to shift responsibility” to the Iraqi military; he complains that without such a concrete plan, “a lot of people fear that it’s going to be more of the same.” But with such a plan, it will also be more of the same. 

As for Hilary Clinton, she’s busy trying to convince New Yorkers that she’s always been critical of the president’s conduct of the war, including his decision to invade; but she’s had some trouble explaining why we didn’t know this sooner. Clinton also seems to think that if the Iraqi elections proceed as planned, we will be able to start withdrawing — which is yet more wishful thinking. 

As for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha, and the House Democrats who have endorsed Murtha’s call for withdrawing most troops before next summer, they’ve offered no realistic assessment of what that would mean for U.S. interests or for the Iraqis themselves. 

What both President Bush and his detractors have refused to admit is that we are in a bind: we can’t provide enough troops to pacify Iraq — indeed, we can scarcely maintain the current level of troop strength for an additional year; we can’t train the Iraqi army and security forces quickly and thoroughly enough to appease their country before we’ll be forced to decrease our own promise; and we can’t leave abruptly without an unacceptable risk of civil war that eventually widens into a dangerous regional conflict involving Iran, Jordan, Turkey and possibly Israel. 

But there is a decent and honorable way out that has been addressed by the Iraqis themselves but that no American politician, not even the brave Murtha, is willing to mention: negotiations with the Sunni insurgents. The elected Iraqi government, representing a population eager for us to leave, should begin talks with rebels who are willing to discuss laying down their arms, in exchange for an orderly and scheduled American departure.

Until something better comes along, it’s the only way to transform the U.S. occupation from a stick into a carrot — and to extract some kind of victory from what has been revealed to be a tactical mess.

But let’s not hold our breath…

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