USA TODAY: Surge's Success Holds Chance To Seize The Moment In Iraq; Dems 'Lost in Time'...
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/...ew-on-war.html
Our view on war in Iraq: Surge's success holds chance to seize the moment in Iraq.
Instead, Democrats are lost in time, Bush lowers the bar for Baghdad.
Iraq remains a violent place, but the trends are encouraging.
U.S. and Iraqi casualties are down sharply. Fewer of the most lethal Iranian-made explosive devices are being used as roadside bombs. In community after community, Sunni groups who were once in league with al-Qaeda have switched sides and are working with the U.S. forces.
On the Shiite side of Iraq's sectarian chasm, something similar is happening. About 70,000 local, pro-government groups, a bit like neighborhood watch groups, have formed to expose extremist militias, according to Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.
But as much as facts have changed on the ground, little seems to have changed in Washington. There are plans to withdraw some troops next year, but there is no clear picture of the endgame in Iraq. How long will troops be needed? Exactly what do we expect success to look like? Will we leave behind a permanent presence?
None of the answers are any clearer than they were when the news began improving. In fact, they seem fuzzier.
On the Republican side, the White House has been busy making excuses for the Iraqi government's failure to move toward national reconciliation (which is the goal of the troop surge), and it has lowered the benchmarks for success to the level of irrelevance. That translates into reduced accountability, continued dependency and an open-ended commitment. Lowering the bar for the Iraqi government sends a message that Baghdad can enjoy security paid for in American lives, and reconstruction aid paid by America's taxpayers, and ignore its responsibilities.
Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, seem lost in a time warp. They could try to impose new benchmarks that acknowledge the military progress. Instead, too many seem unable or unwilling to admit that President Bush's surge of 30,000 more troops has succeeded beyond their initial predictions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who in the spring declared the war lost, said last week that "the surge hasn't accomplished its goals." Anti-war Democrats remain fixated on tying war funding to a rapid troop withdrawal. Yet pulling the troops out precipitously threatens to squander the progress of recent months toward salvaging a decent outcome to the Iraq debacle.
What's needed is acknowledgment that the surge is achieving what was intended: not complete military victory but enough stability to make political compromise possible. What's missing is Iraqi will to take advantage of the success.
So far, the Iraqis have missed just about every benchmark that Congress set early this year and Bush promised to enforce. Too often, they just don't seem to be making an effort. Those benchmarks included passing laws on sharing oil revenue, allowing more former Baath Party members into official jobs and holding provincial elections.
To some degree, the positive "bottom up" developments mitigate that failure. The Sunnis, for instance, have abandoned their political isolation and now want to participate in the government. But the Shiites' persistent resistance to letting them in makes a case for new, meaningful benchmarks, not trivial certainties such as simply passing a budget, one of the requirements the White House has set.
Beyond benchmarks, the military progress has been paralleled by a less aggressive stance by Iran, creating another opening. Iran has enormous influence in Iraq, particularly in Shiite regions. More aggressive diplomacy of the kind advocated by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group would help — even a regional conference such as the one the United States recently hosted in Annapolis, Md., to restart Middle East peace talks.
If the United States has learned anything over the past few years of war, it's that apparent calm can change in an instant. (Just Wednesday, car bombs killed at least 41 people and wounded 150 at the main market in the southern Shiite city of Amarah.) The U.S. military is stretched thin and cannot maintain 160,000 troops in Iraq beyond next spring. So now, before the surge starts to unwind, is the time to refocus the war effort and begin defining the endgame, while leaving the timetable flexible.
The Iraq war, which has cost so much in U.S. lives and treasure, deserves far more than muddling through with fingers crossed. It demands a credible, long-term plan that will allow the United States to get out in a way that preserves U.S. interests in the region, not a political stalemate that forces it to stay in.
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Originally Posted by eliteforce
