Soccer Dad

Is a political "surge" in iraq ahead?

Charles Krauthammer notices that everyone's coming together in Washington, in Iraqi convergence. (or here.)

The latest report from the battlefield is from Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong Iraq War critic. He returned saying essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest being Brian Baird, D-Wash.: Al-Qaeda has been seriously set back as Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala and other provinces switched from the insurgency to our side.

On the other hand

As critics acknowledge military improvement, the administration is finally beginning to concede the political reality that the Maliki government is hopeless. Bush's own national security adviser had said as much in a leaked memo back in November. I and others have been arguing that for months. And when Levin returned and openly called for the Iraqi Parliament to vote out the Maliki government, the president pointedly refused to contradict him.

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.

The problem with this argument is that it confuses long term and short term. In the longer run, there must be a national unity government. But in the shorter term, our assumption that a national unity government is required to pacify the Sunni insurgency turned out to be false. The Sunnis have turned against al-Qaeda and are gradually switching sides in the absence of any oil, federalism or de-Baathification deal coming out of Baghdad.

In the interim, the surge is advancing our two immediate objectives in Iraq: (a) to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and prevent the emergence of an al-Qaeda mini-state, and (b) to pacify the Sunni insurgency, which began the post-liberation downward spiral of sectarian bloodshed, economic stagnation and aborted reconstruction.

Krauthammer writes further

We should have given up on Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi Parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

Perhaps that explains the recent op-ed in the Washington Post by the first Iraqi Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, this past week. The plan, which was dismissed by quite a few commenters, possibly was written at the behest of the administration. I'm just guessing but given that it's been referred to as a "campaign speech, "a stump speech," or "magic pixie dust".

But it also led one blogger to wonder why the Washington Post?

If the administration has finally decided to give its vote of no-confidence in the Maliki government, perhaps it wishes to get the most likely choice of a successor out in public for the public and more importantly Congress to see. Dr. Allawi had previously served as Prime Minister and when he was defeated, he stepped aside.

Daniel Pipes thought that he was an excellent choice at the time. Pipes argued at the time that the fact that Allawi was putting stability ahead of democracy.

That legitimacy comes from asserting an ability to control Iraq makes sense. This must precede other, more constructive accomplishments. I am a bit hopeful that Allawi might fill the democratically-minded strongman niche that I devised in April 2003. So far, he is showing the strongman side; but does he also have the democratic one?

Yes, the Allawi piece, whatever its faults, is a campaign speech. But maybe, more than anything, it is a statement of the administration's frustration with the Maliki government and the presentation of an alternative.

iraq, Iyad Allawi, Nouri Al-Maliki.