What begins to seem evident is that there is enough military progress on the ground to convince enough senators to believe that, on military progress alone, the surge might be working.

The problem is -- politics. So the question I would want to resolve, were I a wavering Reublican senator with an upcoming reelection campaign -- would be chances of the various factions putting together some kind of agreement? I see nothing indicating that the chances are high. The best I have seen were passages in Cordesman's report which indicated that there might be progress on more localized levels.

If we want to find an end to this Iraq abomination that happens before 2009, the inquiry and persuasion may need to concentrate on the shabby state of Iraqi politics on all levels. I would, perhaps, not concentrate solely on Malaki and, unlike Levin, I would not start issuing calls for regime change.

If Iraq is to be ended before the end of the Decider's term, a lot of Senatorial Republicans have to be persuaded it that their political lives will end if they support the president. They must be persuaded that the military without the political is not worth a thing.

Glad to see Warner seems to sense that. Wonder what he'll do about it.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at August 21, 2007 02:31 PM | Permalink to this comment

Levin said he hopes Iraq's parliament votes the Maliki government out of office; perhaps it goes a little far characterizing that as calling for regime change. As for inquiry and persuasion of the Iraqi government, advocating for a less sectarian prime minister and cabinet is certainly appropriate and just the tip of it.

And who exactly is viewing this through the lens of achieving some sort of conclusion in Iraq before the end of the Bush administration? That's simply not on the table.

Posted by: FGF at August 21, 2007 04:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

FGF:

I agree that concluding Iraq now is not likely to happen, though it's a worthwhile goal. When Congress blinked on the military authorization bill (and in so doing gave itself that 18% favorable rating), the essentially agreed to let Bush do what he wanted, while reserving to themselves the right to complain about it in September hearings.

From a narrow political standpoint, the Dems complaining about the current make up of the Iraqi government seems likely to strengthen Malaki's position, rather than weaken it, as would increased calls in the US for his resignation.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at August 21, 2007 06:30 PM | Permalink to this comment

Of particular note to me in the Levin-Warner statement is the absence of Maliki.... While the senators met with all sorts of Iraqi officials, they didn't (apparently) meet with the Prime Minister.

Does anyone else think this is indicative of a US plan to get rid of Maliki... or perhaps a signal to Maliki that he will be gotten rid of unless he shows some results....

Posted by: p_lukasiak at August 21, 2007 06:50 PM | Permalink to this comment

What begins to seem evident is that there is enough military progress on the ground to convince enough senators to believe that, on military progress alone, the surge might be working.

WTF!?! Huh? 500 members of a splinter sect get incinerated, and the "surge" is "working"?

Anyway, it's all the purest bullshit, this fretting about how disappointing our Quisling du jour, Maliki, is. Likewise the latest cliche' -- "There is no military solution. There is only a political solution." Solomon himself couldn't fix Iraq without lots more bloodshed -- let alone dishonest, narcissistic amateurs of the sort who infest our government -- from BOTH parties.

It's not our place to talk about "solutions". WE ARE THE PROBLEM! We need to get the hell out. Then it'd be sweet if you took a good hard look at ourselves. But we won't. The Dems, who'll likely benefit handsomely from eight years of Republican mental illness, are only going to give us more of the same.

Posted by: Samuel Glover at August 21, 2007 07:15 PM | Permalink to this comment

A lot of trains left the station in Iraq by sometime between mid-2003 and the end of 2004, and one of them was this idea of a "less sectarian government" in Baghdad.

A national reconciliation that did not address the deep-seated sense of grievance among the Shiites was never going to happen, (for the same reason anything less than the almost complete autonomy of the Kurdish northern provinces was never going to be accepted by Kurds in the absence of an accounting of all they had suffered under Saddam). Yet we are now in the position of hoping for exactly such a reconciliation after several years in which the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency has very deliberately and consistently targeted Shiite policemen, government workers, clerics and civilians.

From some points of view what we -- or more specifically Amb. Crocker and Gen. Petraeus along with subordinated American commanders -- are asking for makes great sense. It is the only way to reduce the level of intercommunal violence and ethnic cleansing; it is the best way to reduce the extent to which Iraq could become a proxy battlefield for neighboring countries; it may be the only way in which completely disfunctional government agencies can ever do a few of the things their counterparts in normal countries do. For the Sunni Arabs such a reconciliation is the best way of limiting Iranian influence over the government; for Shiites it is the surest path to an eventual American withdrawal from the country.

This is all perfectly clear to American government officials, and lots of Iraqis consumed by their country's nightmare would agree in the abstract. But in the real world it is more than a little hard to see where the political support for a less "sectarian" -- that is, sectarian Shiite -- government would come from.

Leave aside for the moment whether the lust for vengeance among so many Iraqi Shiites is right, or even expedient. Americans are several years past the time during which we might have contributed to addressing it in any meaningful way in any event. Under what circumstances now in the late summer of 2007 is a "let-bygones-be-bygones" reconciliation of any kind a realistic thing to expect?

I've been impressed by how many Americans, including students of the region like Marc Lynch who ought to know better, seem to think that since Shiites now dominate the government they have the power and therefore must conciliate. It wouldn't have worked that way in South Africa 15 years ago if the apartheid government's army had gone underground and begun slaughtering Xhosa and Zulu civilians at every chance -- all whites would have been blamed, and the bitterness created would have taken decades to fade. I'm utterly mystified as to why Americans think it might work that way in Iraq.

Posted by: Zathras at August 22, 2007 02:58 AM | Permalink to this comment

Zathras wrote: "I'm utterly mystified as to why Americans think it might work that way in Iraq."

Because they want to think it. There are some people who could sit naked on a block of ice....all that have to do is 'think' hot.

Posted by: jonst at August 22, 2007 02:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

Seems to me that Levin is signaling that Dems won't kick up a fuss if there's a coup. Big surprise.

Posted by: Gus at August 22, 2007 07:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

I've been impressed by how many Americans, including students of the region like Marc Lynch who ought to know better, seem to think that since Shiites now dominate the government they have the power and therefore must conciliate. It wouldn't have worked that way in South Africa 15 years ago if the apartheid government's army had gone underground and begun slaughtering Xhosa and Zulu civilians at every chance -- all whites would have been blamed, and the bitterness created would have taken decades to fade. I'm utterly mystified as to why Americans think it might work that way in Iraq.

Even in your South African hypothetical, though, it would eventually be incumbent on the superior party with the power to conciliate. Even with a violent adversary. If you dispossess a party, and that party fights back, your choices are to either completely vanquish the insurgent, or seek some mutually acceptable modus vivendi. But the party with the power and the resources is in the position to give some away. The party without - not so much. This is true even if the party in power has a legitimate historical grievance against the dispossessed party.

Whether or not it is likely to happen is another question.

Posted by: Eric Martin at August 22, 2007 08:13 PM | Permalink to this comment

No, whether or not it is likely to happen is the question I asked.

Just because I can see the Iraqi Shiites' point of view here doesn't mean I think their problems are our problems. Whether or not they get what they think is justice doesn't matter that much to me, and I have no sympathy for roving death squads no matter how sad their history is. My point is that to get national reconciliation you have to start by acknowledging that wrong was done, and acknowedging also by whom it was done.

The reconciliation we've been promoting in Iraq has been one that would gloss over that question, and the Shiites, also the Kurds, aren't buying it. That's the political reality, and we'd be better of facing it squarely than wringing our hands because Shiite factional leaders are acting in an unhelpful sectarian way.

Posted by: Zathras at August 23, 2007 12:17 AM | Permalink to this comment

Here is the icing on the cake, conclusively demonstrating our success in Iraq:

The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

"Al-Douri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces," al-Jashaami said.

Al-Douri has decided to deal directly with US forces in Iraq, according to al-Jashaami. He figures in the 55-card deck of "most wanted" officials from the former Iraqi regime issued by the US government.

In return, for cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda, al-Douri has asked for guarantees over his men's safety and for an end to Iraqi army attacks on his militias.

Recent weeks have seen a first step in this direction, when Baathist fighters cooperated with Iraqi government forces in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives in the volatile Diyala province and in several districts of the capital, Baghdad.

Posted by: nabalzbbfr at August 23, 2007 12:46 AM | Permalink to this comment

I can't resist quoting from tonight's NY Times:

"As the end of the Congressional recess draws closer, the debate over Iraq policy will only intensify, and the new intelligence assessment, called 'Prospects for Iraq's Stability' is likely to play an important role in that discussion. Officials said the assessment concluded that Mr. Maliki retained support among Shiite groups in part because putting together a new government would be arduous. Officials in Washington and Baghdad for months have said that any military gains would be ephemeral if Iraqi politicians were not able to bridge sectarian divides.

"The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report will not be issued until Thursday, and spokesmen for both the White House and the director of national intelligence declined to comment. 'The report says that there's been little political progress to date, and it's very gloomy on the chances for political progress in the future,' said one Congressional official with knowledge of its contents.

"The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

"The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is 'more dire in its assessments' than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

" 'It doesn't take a policy position,' one official said. 'But it leaves you with the sense that what we've been doing hasn't been working, but we can't let up, or it'll get worse.' "

_____________________________

Alas, it apparently doesn't tell us what we ARE supposed to do. Institute a draft? Wish all our enemies into the cornfield?

Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at August 23, 2007 05:49 AM | Permalink to this comment

Zathras point regarding South Africa is quite on the money.

Certainly rational parties (I am sure both Iraqi Sunni and Shia Arab) can see the destructive cycle, but breaking it is quite another matter from abstractly seeing the proposition as lose-lose. On the ground it is rather hard to exert control if one can not provide for security, and the short term / immediate incentives for tit-for-tat retaliation on the ground are rather strong versus the abstract payoff of peace - after all if you restrain yourself and then the radicals don't - well you're dead.

Early on, say 2004-2005, many observers otherwise well-informed say like Cole (leaving aside his funny politics) were downplaying the potential for civil war escalating by citing to polls and other information indicating most Iraqis did not (and do not) want the present infernal cycle. All quite right, except it does not take a majority to drive a civil war, only an inability of 'central security' (government or whatever) to prevent it.

There are enough parties (minority as they may or may not be, I'll assume they are minorities) that stand to profit from (or believe they can profit from) the violence that it will continue.

Rather like Lebanon, its self-catalysing. And will continue until the losses become too clear even for the warlords. That is, until they beat the living hell out of each other, or in the alternative, a very nasty dictatorship willing to break a lot of everyone's bones and also capable of doing so arises.

Unpleasant, but there is the price of gross incompetence and delusionalism - or what was it, "Good News from Iraq".... Bolshy style spin.

BTW Greg, I replied.

Posted by: The Lounsbury at August 23, 2007 02:14 PM | Permalink to this comment