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Last Copter Out of Baghdad: Bush Flees Iraq Mess On The Campaign Express (Rick Perlstein, January 14 - 20, 2004, Village Voice)

That brings us to the latest war aims fallen by the wayside, the ones put in place last spring, after the end of "major hostilities" was declared. As it happens, Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer laid these out in June with a clarity and sweep the administration is certainly coming to regret. Goal No. 1 was the creation of a capitalist and transparent economy. "Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands is essential for Iraq's economic recovery." And the idea was to do it fast. Said one of his advisers in July, citing Eastern Europe as a template, "Experience shows us that the faster you do it, the more beneficial it is for the economy." The other aim was the establishment of a constitutional government. For the Iraqi people to get back their sovereignty before a constitution was written under American supervision, Bremer insisted, "invites confusion and chaos."

There they are: two straight-ahead, clear benchmarks of success -- giving Iraq a functioning private economy and giving it a constitution -- right from the administration's mouth. But we've gotten nowhere on either one. The drive for economic reform "just disappeared from the agenda," one occupation official told The Washington Post last month. "It was just too risky." As for the constitution, by November, negotiations between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the interested Iraqi factions bogged down, and America announced a new plan: The American occupation would end July 1, 2004, and there wouldn't be any constitution, just a bare-bones, nonspecific "basic law." The original timetable for self-rule in Iraq was late 2004 or early 2005. It's not that things are ahead of schedule. It is that we have lopped off half the game clock, and moved the end zone to our present stalemate point, the 50-yard line. Touchdown! Game over! Everyone into the locker room!

There is only one problem, says Sidney Blumenthal: "It could be that by setting these artificial deadlines and abdicating a good deal of responsibility that the Bush administration simply accelerates the centrifugal forces within Iraq." Just as in Vietnam, we leave a nation behind to its own civil war. Only this time, we leave it even more unstable than we found it.

Violent factions across the country appear to be gearing up for . . . something. After the capture of Saddam Hussein, a call from clerics to their followers to refrain from attacking one another held for a few days; then assailants in a passing car opened fire on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad -- drive-by sectarian warfare. Now Sunnis are arming themselves in militias, a counterbalance, they say, to the "Mahdi Army" of Shiite cleric and occupation critic Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr. They promise to turn their new forces, part of a "Clear Victory Movement," against the Americans unless Sunnis get sufficient power in the post-war settlement.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has bowed to pressure to keep the Kurdish region semi-autonomousófor fear that any other decision would set off a Kurdish uprisingóand Kurds now talk of annexing oil-rich Kirkuk. That angers the Turks -- raising the possibility of a regional conflict -- and sets a precedent for dividing Iraq into Yugoslavia-style ethnic enclaves. Which paves the way for possible Yugoslavia-style ethnic cleansing, considering that the greatest population of Kurds lives not in the protected north but in Baghdad. Will Sunni militia leaders start demanding these Kurds return to "their" homeland?

One of the chief criticisms of U.S. handling of Vietnam has always been that we refused to accept the realities on the ground and made things worse by staying too long. Before the Iraq war, critics predicted that the same would happen there, in particular because we were going in to get the oil.

Instead, the Administration, whether it understood the facts before the war or not, has quite quickly accepted that Kurdistan and Shi'astan are inevitable and that the Sunni are the chief barrier to a peaceful future. Further, they recognize that much tension can be reduced if the Iraqis feel like they're in control of their own nation, instead of being run by us. We'll still be there, of course, providing many of the security needs and helping whatever government replaces us. But responsibility will be shifted as much as possible to the folks who are going to have to learn to wield it.

The Turks are going to be mad about the Kurds, but if we're the guarantor of the Kurdish state they really can't do anything about it.. The Sunni may be cleansed--if they can't reconcile themselves to minority status in a Shi'ite state, that would probably be a good thing. If we were surprised by the degree to which the Kurds and Shi'ites are ready for relatively democratic self-rule and the degree to which the Sunni are unable to accept the same, at least we're reacting quickly to the new knowledge and the Sunni are not being allowed to stand in the way of progress. A constitution may take a little while, as it did in Afghanistan, but is hardly being abandoned just because we pull back some, any more than it was abandoned in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, our attention will be shifting toward the next few battlefields--figuratively and literally--in the war against terror states: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Western Pakistan...

Things may have turned out completely differently than the Administration thought they would, but they seem to be turning out rather well. Most importantly, the Administration has shown a flexibility and willingness to reckon with reality that seems like it should thrill the critics. That is, if their criticisms were serious and not just anti-Bush....

MORE:
Bush Team Revising Plans for Granting Self-Rule to Iraqis (STEVEN R. WEISMAN, 1/13/04, NY Times)

The Bush administration, seeking to overcome new resistance on the political and security fronts in Iraq, is revising its proposed process for handing over power to an interim Iraqi government by June 30, administration officials said Monday.

Officials held a round of urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad in the wake of the rejection on Sunday by a powerful Shiite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, of the administration's complex plans to hold caucuses around the country to select an interim legislature and executive in a newly self-governing Iraq. Officials say they are responding to the cleric's objections with a new plan that will open the caucuses to more people and make their inner workings more transparent.

Administration officials also expressed concern about a separate part of Ayatollah Sistani's statement on Sunday that demanded that any agreement for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected representatives.

Those twin setbacks raise questions about who would have to reach an agreement with the United States that would allow more than 100,000 American troops to remain in the country after power is handed over to the Iraqis this summer.

The administration has not yet begun negotiating such an agreement with its handpicked Iraqi authorities. Such negotiations — in which the American military is expected to ask for wide latitude in its counterinsurgency efforts — could be much tougher if they have to be carried out with Iraqis who are directly elected.

Administration officials acknowledged Monday evening that the remarks opposing the caucus plan from Ayatollah Sistani were a clear rebuff that would not be easy to overcome. The ayatollah, in a decree issued Sunday, said members of the interim legislature must be chosen through direct elections. Administration officials had been trying to convince him that such elections were impractical, but did not succeed.

"We're pushing ahead with this process and trying to deal with Ayatollah's concerns," said a top administration official. "We're looking at the same process we have, but trying to make it as open, inclusive and democratic as possible."

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 13, 2004 4:50 PM