We’ve been hearing for months that the U.S. troop surge has been a security success and a political failure. But with little media fanfare, Iraqis may have just found the key to resolving their differences: old-fashioned politics.
What? I must’ve missed this kind of good news over at Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Salon, and MSNBC etc.
On February 13 the Iraqi parliament simultaneously passed three new laws: one that sets the relationship between the central and provincial governments, a second giving amnesty to thousands of detainees, and a third setting the 2008 national budget. Each piece of legislation is important in its own right, but how the overall compromise came about may prove even more significant than the laws themselves.
February 13? Hmmm, what was happening Feb 13? Maybe Hillary Clinton got teary-eyed, or perhaps some guy that Barack Obama knew said something stupid? I dunno, maybe Britney went into rehab or came out? Clearly there must’ve been more important news than political success brought about by the security that American troops provided in Iraq.
It’s too early to tell just how much, if at all, the February 13 compromise will transform Iraqi politics. Anything could happen on the security front. One well-timed bomb could easily undermine whatever political progress has been made. Formidable economic challenges remain as well. But something very encouraging just took place, and if Iraqis can build upon the February 13 compromise, someone other than General Petraeus may claim a success.
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I agree that the tough part for them to hurdle was the compromise needed, but has any of this been implemented yet?
I (Like Karl Rove) read the NYT daily and they covered it in the news section and had this following editorial on the 14th:
“Good news is rare in Iraq. But after months of bitter feuding, Iraq’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees.
All these steps are essential for national conciliation.”
more at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/opinion/14thu2.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=compromise+feb+14++2008+iraq&st=nyt&oref=slogin
and a great article:
More than any previous legislation, the new initiatives have the potential to spur reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and set the country on the road to a more representative government, starting with new provincial elections.
The voting itself was a significant step forward for the Parliament, where even basic quorums have been rare. In a classic legislative compromise, the three measures, each of which was a burning issue for at least one faction, were packaged together for a single vote to encourage agreement across sectarian lines.
“Today we have a wedding party for the Iraqi Parliament,” said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker, who is a Sunni. “We have proved that Iraqis are one bloc and Parliament is able to find solutions that represent all Iraqis.”
at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?scp=1&sq=compromise+feb+14++2008+iraq&st=nyt
The devil is in the details on Iraq’s political progress:
On the de-baathification law: The Administration has been making a lot of spate of recent bills passed by the Iraqi legislature. But the de-Baathification reform law has serious questions whether it is more ruse than reform:
Hashemi was going to veto the law, but decided against it: “I still have concerns about it,” Hashemi said. “It doesn’t serve the national reconciliation project.”
The evidence that this is substantive political progress is highly questionable. Two-thirds of parliament was missing on this historic law! Why? The Shia didn’t like the bill and viewed it as letting Baathists off the prosecutorial hook. Also, if the new law was good for the ex-Baathists, they would have praised it, and voted for it; most didn’t, and even boycotted parliament.
How –and when– this law is interpreted and implemented by a (yet to be chosen) seven member council will finally determine if it’s really progress.
Therefore, once again, we are looking to the future to see if political progress can be achieved.
On the provincial powers law:
Therefore, -again- we are looking to the future to see if political progress can be achieved.
On the 2008 national budget:
-The kurds got their demand of 17% of the oil revenues, this time; conditional on a 2008 consensus (the Kurds will never permit it).
-Approximately 12,000, out of 20,000-60,000, have been released from Iraqi jails. Sunni’s are demanding that Americans must do the same. They haven’t yet. 5,000 have been identified not to be released.
So, once again, we are looking to the future to see if political progress can be achieved.
In Fact, it can be argued the Feb. 13 laws passed may have born many empty promises in the minds of Iraqis, through delay, misinterpretation and distrust, and finally boiled over in the…
Note also that the parliamentary boycotts, walk-outs, absenteeism, and general distrust that took place in Feb. 13 occured well before Maliki inflaming the anger of many as he moved into Basra. The Basra episode has now made even made things more difficult for him.
Therefore, the case for Iraqi political progress is clearly and distinctly much more problematic than simply meeting a legislative agenda, as it’s realities are still future dependent. And the problems, after Basra, are now set to intensify even more; especially, too, with elections in Oct., as Sadr will move to win Basra and take it from Hakim, and, in effect, from Maliki.
I’m sure Nancy Pelosi will appreciate the effort Doug has made to continue the campaign to ignore any progress made in Iraq.
No doubt her agents will try and use many of the same lines of argument when Petraeus and Crocker report next week.
But after complaining for so long that Iraqis haven’t achieve the ridiculous benchmarks that Congress laid out as a precondition for continued U.S. support it’s going to be a tough sell when those benchmarks have been met.
What do you want to be that long after Iraq has become a stable, mostly democrat nation and an ally in the war on terror (Bush’s definition of victory) Democrats will still be insisting it’s a total failure.
And yet, if they applied the same standards to their Democrat allies in local goverments around the United States Iraq would seem a model by comparison.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/SPECIAL-PREVIEW-br–Anatomy-of-the-Surge-11265
Great points Doug, but it appears you missed the main point of the article: Democratic Party and leftist opposition to the war was based on irrationality in 2005, and because of that intractable and irrational opposition to success there could be no political success in that climate:
“Perhaps, we thought, we could find common ground with these Democratic critics—their number included Senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, and Carl Levin—and forge a consensus on how to move forward.”
…
“The effort was doomed. It was overtaken by political events or, rather, by one specific event: a press conference, on November 17, 2005, by John Murtha, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania.”
…
” By the time the President announced the surge in January, the climate had turned frostier still.
By then, the leadership of the newly triumphant Democrats on Capitol Hill had already determined that the war was irretrievably lost and that the only responsible course was to get out as quickly as possible. Signaling the emphasis the Democrats meant to place on ending our involvement in Iraq quickly, Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, sought to make Jack Murtha her principal deputy.
As for the President’s new strategy, the Democrats labeled it “an escalation”—no doubt because polls and focus groups showed that this would make it seem least palatable to the American public. The administration countered with the proposition that we were sending “reinforcements.” The media settled on “surge.” Each of these labels had the unfortunate side-effect of obscuring the many other changes contained in the new strategy and focusing attention exclusively on the increase in military troops—certainly the gutsiest element in terms of our domestic politics but by no means the only important one.
Week after week, the Democrats attempted to use their control of Congress to suffocate the surge in its cradle. Various proposals were advanced to hobble General Petraeus and render implementation impossible. In April, just as the 30,000 new surge troops were entering the country, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared peremptorily: “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”
Reid was wrong. While the political standoff in Washington worsened, the situation in Iraq began to improve. Not right away or all at once, of course. In fact, to judge by the measures of greatest salience to the American media, the situation only eroded in the first half of 2007. Attacks rose in number, as did American fatalities. But Petraeus was steadily refining and adapting the new strategy, and his efforts became especially productive after the full complement of new forces was on the ground and the “surge in operations” could begin in earnest by the beginning of June.
By September 2007, when Petraeus and Crocker gave their first report to Congress, the trend line toward success was discernible. Still, the matter remained debatable—to the point where Senator Clinton felt confident enough to inform Petraeus and Crocker on national television that “the reports you provided to us require the willing suspension of disbelief” and to characterize the two men as “the de-facto spokesmen of what many of us consider to be a failed policy.”
A few months after that showdown, however, the progress was all but indisputable. By now, indeed, we can see that the surge has bought precious time for the United States and the nascent Iraqi state to progress meaningfully toward five specific objectives.”
Great article Doug. Did you read it? It says Democrats’ political opposition to the war prevented success; ie, you can’t expect success and oppose efforts to succeed at the same time.
My interest, Scott, lay only in the quoted portion I posted.
I disagree with Feavers’ analysis of the surge and it’s by-products, obviously.
Feaver’s commentary, although, well-informed, is also partisan; he, of course, is ‘pissed’, and laments the probability of a withdrawal after Jan.
Numerous events, decisions, and personalities ‘doomed’ Iraq. To pin it on Dems is politics.