Plumbing failure in Iraq — VOICES for REASON

Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic reflects on news that Iraq’s politicians are still wrangling over details of the country’s election law — and even now, after the much touted U.S. surge, cannot settle their differences. He writes:

The surge was supposed to create the space necessary for the sectarian factions to come together. That was its critical definition of success. So far: surge fail. And if the parties cannot hammer out an agreement now, with 120,000 US troops still in country, what chance once the US leaves?

The situation is actually far worse than Sullivan’s rhetorical question implies. Hype about the so-called success of the surge has enabled people to cast out of mind the fact that Washington’s mission in Iraq was a fiasco.

Remember the original “definition of success” for Iraq — and how it was progressively downgraded in the face of failures? Bush launched a fanciful mission to bring democracy and elections to the region (a goal that my colleagues and I argued at the time was inimical to U.S. security). Then Bush’s fantasy vision of Iraq as a beacon of “democracy” was pared-down to the idea of an Iraqi government that can at least stand on its own, so America can stand down. Then it dissolved to something like, If we give the ethnic-sectarian factions in Iraq some space to talk, instead of butchering each other by the truckload, then that would be progress. That was the goal of the surge. Yet the centuries old feuds and hatreds that divide Iraqis cannot be wished away; nor is there reason to think they will ever go away. If anything, as I argue in Winning the Unwinnable War, aspects of the surge may well have sown the seeds for greater strife: Washington’s policy was to empower Sunnis, who harbor long-standing grudges against Shiites, and in some cases hope for an opportunity to settle old scores. Now they’re armed.

For more on my view of the surge and the Iraq war, you can read an interview I took part in here and here (part one; part two); I also address it in chapter 6 of my book.