War-Mood Metrics

[Thom Little]

A little less than a year ago, in the aftermath of the first Iraqi elections, the most irresponsible thing being said in Washington was that everything was going to be fine. Now, with the next set of elections scheduled for Dec. 15, the new irresponsibility is the increasingly respectable assertion that the war has already been lost. Irrational optimism has been replaced by unjustified pessimism. This is not some triumph of experience over idealism. One a priori ideological standpoint is simply giving way to another.

The last, bloody year in Iraq has seen an uninterrupted stream of insurgent attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces. Civil strife between Shiites and Sunnis has escalated. The jihadist wing of the insurgency has made civilians into primary targets, which in turn has encouraged Shiite militias, working closely with the government, to use outrageous tactics - including torture and targeted assassination - in the fight against those insurgents. Meanwhile, ordinary Iraqis, acting as if they expect a civil war, are moving out of mixed towns to safer, more homogeneous communities. You can hardly blame them, seeing that the United States has not managed to provide security and that denominational tensions have continued to mount.

The deteriorating security situation, coupled with rising opposition to the war in the United States, has fueled the view that the game is up. Yet there has also been significant progress toward Sunni participation in the political process. Before the elections last January, no one in the world (outside the senior levels of the Bush administration) expected Sunnis to turn out in more than token numbers. Since the constitutional referendum in October, though, several Sunni political parties have formed to contest this week's elections. These parties may soon represent the first organized, credible voice for Sunnis in the new Iraq. They can be expected to seek their fair share of the political spoils in the new Parliament - but to get them, they will have to offer something, beginning with a drawing down of violence on the part of the ex-Baathist, ex-military wing of the insurgency. In return, they may obtain a reduced role for the de-Baathification commission so unpopular with their constituents and perhaps some flexibility from Shiite leaders on the degree of autonomy to be sought by the oil-rich south.

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It is an uncomfortable truth that American forces in Iraq have come to provide a motivation for terrorist violence. It is equally uncomfortable to acknowledge that with each day that it cannot defeat the insurgency, the United States loses credibility as a military power able to achieve its objectives through force. In the near term, however, if the Iraqis are to reach a political agreement that holds, they cannot do it without U.S. troops as guarantors of any pact. For all their complaints about occupation, the new Sunni politicians understand this. Instead of calling for immediate withdrawal, they are urging a timetable for a phased pullout - a request to which Shiite and Kurdish leaders are ready to acquiesce. The willingness of Iraqi leaders to reach such a consensus suggests that, for them at least, the construction of a functioning postwar Iraqi state is not yet out of the question.



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11wwln_essay.html