Calling Their Bluff

by dday

Somehow, the reporting on this has been very thin, but it’s extremely significant that the Iraqi government is gradually but insistently extracting the concession of a firm timeline for withdrawal from Iraq in ways that the Democratic Congress never has.

Iraq’s foreign minister insisted Sunday that any security deal with the United States must contain a “very clear timeline” for the departure of U.S. troops. A suicide bomber struck north of Baghdad, killing at least five people including an American soldier.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters that American and Iraqi negotiators were “very close” to reaching a long-term security agreement that will set the rules for U.S. troops in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Zebari said the Iraqis were insisting that the agreement include a “very clear timeline” for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces, but he refused to talk about specific dates.

Yes, it’s conditions-based, and who becomes the next President matters as to its implementation. But the Iraqis have taken a page from George Bush’s playbook to force this concession – move toward a deadline and stubbornly refuse to concede. There were about 3 or 4 points where Democrats could have achieved the same thing, but their will never held out beyond a couple days.

There are still pitfalls in Iraq that could alter any timetable, of course. Suicide bombings continue and the military operations designed to root out insurgents are still telegraphed to allow them to slip away. The collapse of the provincial elections law is very disturbing, particularly because those in Iraq’s greatest trouble spots are growing increasingly angered.

The anger among the Awakenings movements is already palpable. The New York Times quotes Ali Hatem Suleiman saying that “We are running out of patience,” and Sheik Hamid al-Hayis saying “This is a slap on the face of Iraq… we couldn’t make a big change in the government structure. That pushed us to work to make change in the provincial council. But even that we can’t touch.” Dr. iRack, just back from Iraq, reports that the notoriously outspoken Ali Hatem “is deadly serious about returning to war against all the Islamic parties (Sunni and Shia) if the Awakening groups are not given the power they think they deserve.” That fits what I’ve heard from others less prone to hyperbole.

Leaders of the Awakenings have been warning that they are “losing patience” and “the next few months will be decisive” so many times that I suspect some people have stopped taking them seriously […] We are potentially approaching a moment of truth. The consequences of building up these forces outside of the structures of the Iraqi state, while stringing them along with promises that require Iraqi government acquiesence to deliver may be coming due. I know well that US military commanders have been far more attentive to these issues than have the cheerleaders, and MNF-I and Ambassador Crocker have been working as hard as they can to resolve them. Their failure to deliver a compromise on the provincial elections law and their failure to deliver meaningful progress on SOI integration both suggest the limits of American influence in Iraq – a lesson which the advocates of “strategic patience”, who continue to view American decisions as the only ones which really matter, never seem to digest.

The Awakenings groups continue to be denied entry into the larger Iraqi security forces, which as we learned in the NYT today is where most of the jobs are in the country, on the government rolls. The provincial elections would have provided them some representation in the Parliament, and yet should they ever go through it would spell full-scale armed conflict in Kirkuk. There are also intra-Shiite battles that have not been extinguished. Because the root causes of the violence in Iraq have not been addressed, the potential for chaos always exists. And of course there are limits to the pressure that the US military can put on this situation.

And yet, the surge supporters are a victim of their own cheerleading. Their perception of success has led to the Iraqi Shiite ruling party believing they can pummel any challenges to their power and bribe the rest, so they feel free making the move to call for a withdrawal. They’ve caught Bush and Cheney in a real bind – you can only walk the tightrope between “we’re winning” and “it’ll all go to hell if we leave” for so long. In addition, that American-centric view of the state of play in Iraq is deeply misguided. We’ve set events in motion that we now will find difficult to control.

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