JON STEWART SYNDROME CLAIMS ANOTHER:

Perhaps the neocons got it right in the Middle East: We should not be blinded by liberal prejudice when assessing Bush (Max Hastings, May 4, 2005, The Guardian)

The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.

Such scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere.

It may sound perverse to suggest that we should not measure progress in Iraq solely, or even chiefly, by counting corpses. Yet most insurgent activity is the work of Sunnis, chronically alienated by dispossession from power, or jihadists committed simply to frustrate any project sponsored by the US.

The key question, surely, is how far the Shia and Kurd majority is moving towards the creation of a working society. Evidence on this is mixed. Journalists are able to travel so little outside the Baghdad enclave that the world depends for information chiefly on western military and diplomatic sources.

My own contacts say that the situation is improving, but remains precarious. They suggest that criminal anarchy is gradually being stemmed. The recruitment and training of Iraqi security forces is going a little better.

It is hard to derive much comfort from statistics that show a diminution in clashes between insurgents and security forces. These principally reflect a lower-profile strategy by the coalition, designed to reduce confrontation and casualties.

The most powerful reason for remaining cautious about Iraq must be doubt — shared by many US officers — about whether the country is sus­tainable as a unitary state. It is hard to believe that the Sunnis will quickly reconcile themselves to Shia supremacy, or that the Shias now leading the government will forswear payback for decades of subjection. The Kurds will do their own thing in their own region. Only fear of American wrath and Turkish intervention can dissuade them from breakaway.

Except that an independent Kurdistan is almost inevitable eventually.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 5, 2005 12:06 AM