Rather than accepting the proposals made by the Iraq Study Group, the panel of America’s “great and good” chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, George Bush is – in public at least -- clinging stubbornly to the concept that victory is still achievable and defeat unthinkable.
The Baker-Hamilton proposals were built around two main ideas: a withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq by a target date of early 2008 and an “aggressive” regional diplomatic initiative to bolster a weak Iraq which would include reaching out to Iran and Syria. President Bush has rejected both. It is tempting to wonder how far this was the result of an objective reassessment of policy options and how far it was the product of the president’s character: in particular, his resistance to U-turns and his reluctance to be seen taking advice, on this all-important issue, from someone so close to his father. There have been hints of contrition, but on the whole Bush’s dogged determination to pursue an increasingly lonely path, in the face of considerable opposition at home and abroad, is remarkable.
The new strategy is an attempt to find an alternative path to goals which remain elusive but unchanged: replacing a tyranny with a more-or-less democratic, more-or-less stable Iraq, thereby bringing hope of change to the Middle East and preventing catastrophe in what has become a crucial front in the global “war on terror”. There are four main components to the new approach:
the so-called military “surge”: sending some 21,000 extra US troops to Iraq, most of them to tackle the high level of sectarian violence in Baghdad;
a “political surge”: the setting of “benchmarks” to judge political progress by the Iraqi government in achieving key goals – agreeing on how to share oil revenues, revising the constitution, relaxing de-Baathification laws, and introducing an amnesty for some Sunni insurgents;
an “economic surge”: a new effort to create jobs and push forward the reconstruction effort, thereby winning Iraqi “hearts and minds”;
and, finally, a series of measures to block attempts by Syria and Iran to destabilise Iraq and target US (and coalition) forces there.
What does all this amount to? The central aim of stabilising Baghdad is to buy time for the government of Nuri al-Maliki to turn itself into a genuine government of national unity. The problem is that bringing order to the most troubled neighbourhoods of the Iraqi capital will be bloody and will test to the limits the capabilities of the Maliki government and the degree to which it can work harmoniously with the Americans. There is a good deal of scepticism (clearly shared within parts of the Bush administration) as to whether a Shi’ite-led government can behave in a non-sectarian way. Maliki is politically dependent on the fiercely anti-American Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands a large bloc of seats in the Iraqi parliament. Letting the Americans crack down on the cleric’s powerful militia, the Mahdi Army, now thought to be 60,000-strong, may therefore be a step the Iraqi prime minister is unwilling or unable to take. Moreover entering the sprawling Baghdad suburb of Sadr City – the Mahdi Army’s stronghold and home to between two and three million Iraqi Shi’a – would pose formidable challenges for the US military.
The political and economic challenges are no less daunting than the military ones. Maliki and his Shi’ite allies have so far shown themselves reluctant to implement “reconciliation” measures of a bold and imaginative kind. Instead of viewing such steps as essential to holding the country together, they tend to see them as an American attempt to deprive the Shi’ite majority of its historic victory – i.e. its transition from a repressed and marginalised community to a politically dominant one. As for pouring millions more dollars into reconstruction efforts, most experts believe the Americans are doing the right things, but too late. Moreover insecurity will inevitably hobble any measure, however well intentioned, to bring down unemployment and restore a degree of normality to Iraqi life.
Finally, what if the targets (or benchmarks) are not met? In an effort to concentrate the minds of Iraqi leaders, President Bush declared pointedly that America’s commitment to their country was not open-ended – a not-so-subtle hint that, one day, they will be on their own. But here the American president finds himself in exactly the same dilemma as Baker, Hamilton and anyone else trying to guide a tired and disillusioned America towards a viable exit from Iraq. Since the consequences of failure would be catastrophic for Iraq, for the Middle East, and for American standing in the world, withdrawal – at whatever point – would be a huge gamble. The likelihood is that there will be no significant withdrawal in the remaining two years of the Bush presidency, and that the poisoned chalice of Iraq will be bequeathed to his successor.
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