Stuck in Iraq

So wrote the conservative New York Times columnist William Safire in defense of Bush's Iraq policy. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- until recently considered the main obstacle to "progress" in Iraq -- is now labelled "quietist." Clearly, the U.S. has set its bar for radicalism quite a bit higher of late. As the June 30th deadline for the transfer of sovereignty approaches, the violence is getting worse. Over the last few days more than a 100 Iraqis and 30 coalition troops have been killed in the worst violence since last May.

The Bush administration says that the surge in violence was only to be expected -- that the "terrorists," fearing that the U.S. is building a successful democracy in Iraq, want to thwart all progress. Violence, the administration would have us believe, is a sign not of the insurgents' strength but their weakness -- they can't win politically, so they kill in an effort to destabilize Iraq. But if the spike in violence is an indication of the insurgents' weakness, so is the U.S.'s inability to maintain security in Iraq -- this goes for the U.S. troops and the Iraqi police force they have trained. As Harold Meyerson points out in the Washington Post:

"In Kufa, Najaf and Baghdad's own Sadr City, the government's new cops handed over police cars and police stations to the militia without any reported resistance. In some instances, the cops actually joined forces with Sadr's militants.

Within Iraq, there are thousands of current and potential gunmen willing to fight for their people and their creeds -- Kurdish automony, Sunni hegemony, Shiite control, an Islamic republic. But the force charged with defending a pluralistic, united Iraq just went AWOL under fire.

Even Republicans who support Bush's Iraq policy are questioning whether the U.S. is in control. The Bush administration's talk of winning "hearts and minds" sounds hollow -- especially when congressmen on both sides of the aisle are drawing comparisons to Vietnam. Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy went so far as to call Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," and Sen. John McCain said, "We have to tell the American people that we are in this for the long haul. We cannot say, as we did in Vietnam, that the light is at the end of the tunnel."

The U.S.'s goal is to sustain as few casualties as possible before quitting a relatively stable Iraq, but U.S. troops are badly overstretched. With the presidential race in full swing, this is a convenient time for Bush to remember that the U.S. is a member of the United Nations -- an organization that could supply troops and play a role in legitimizing Iraq's political transition. But having gone over the head of the U.N. to invade Iraq, the U.S. has largely sidelined it during the occupation. Besides, even if the U.S. acceded to a central U.N. role in Iraq, it is doubtful that the organization would have either the will or the capacity to take up the offer.

The U.N. will have a hard time convincing its members of the value of the mission. The French and Germans, and others who opposed the war from the get-go, aren't likely to send troops to sort out the mess created by the U.S. invasion. And the lesson they draw from Madrid is that committing forces to Iraq entails risks both there and at home. Moreover, given the U.S.'s refusal to implement a fair, international bidding process on contracts for Iraq's reconstruction projects, it is also in a bad position to lecture other countries about the need to donate millions of dollars to rebuild Iraq.

What's more, the U.N. carries out strictly peace-keeping missions -- though its record even in these is mixed -- and Iraq hardly qualifies as that.

There are other reasons why the U.N. isn't in the best position to send troops to Iraq at this time. New York Times says:

"Unfortunately, not only is the role of the U.N. still unsettled, the world organization is suffering from two self-inflicted wounds. One is a kickback scandal of multibillion-dollar proportions swirling around the U.N.-run oil-for-food program that kept ordinary Iraqis from starving during the long years of punishing economic sanctions. The other is the recent finding by an independent investigative panel that oversights in U.N. security management may have worsened the death toll in last August's terrorist bombing of the Baghdad headquarters."

That leaves the U.S. and its coalition -- minus Spain, Honduras, and whoever else decides to pull out by June 30th -- all by themselves to deal with the insurgents. The recent violence weakens Bush's claims for himself as a "war president." John Kerry's criticisms of the Bush administration as unilateral, secretive, and deceptive have been bolstered by damaging testimony by Bush's former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to the 9/11 Commission. And it's unlikely that Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who after much arm-twisting will testify before the commission today, will be able to repair the damage done. With mounting U.S. casualties and the possibility of more mass deployments to Iraq, the Bush administration no longer has public opinion on its side. The Pew Center for the People and the Press reports:

"Public support for war in Iraq has been unaffected by the murders and desecration of the corpses of American citizens in Falluja. However, continued turmoil and violence in Iraq may be taking a toll on President Bush's approval ratings. More Americans now disapprove of the way he is doing his job than approve, though by only a slight margin (47% disapprove vs. 43% approve). Just four-in-ten approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, his lowest rating ever and down from 59% in January. Bush's evaluations on other issues – the economy, energy and even terrorism – have fallen as well. And by a wide margin (57% to 32%) the public does not think he has a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion."

Who is the man to design and carry out such a "clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion"? That, of course, is the question of the hour. But Kerry has no answer, except to criticize the Bush approach. In a radio interview Kerry said that:

"You don't set an arbitrary date for the transfer of power to a non entity. You have to make the judgment of stability. I mean, this date it, appears to me, may well have been set by the American election, not by the stability of Iraq."

The June 30th transfer of sovereignty will be a façade. Iraq is without legitimate political institutions or security structures. Whoever wins the U.S. election, don't expect U.S. troops to quit "sovereign Iraq" in numbers any time soon.