The Iraq conundrum

Thursday, 23rd August 2007

George Will looks ahead to what he calls "a Weimar moment" in DC next month, when David Petraeus delivers his assessment. Mutterings about a "stab in the back" grow ever louder, he says: "...There still are those so impervious to experience that they continue to refer to Syria as 'lower-hanging fruit.'" Elsewhere in the Washington Post, an editorial argues that Iraq's prime minister is getting too much of the blame for the impasse in Baghdad:

Mr. Maliki, who has scant personal support inside or outside of Iraq, makes an easy scapegoat. Yet Congress and the administration would be wrong to focus blame on him, for two reasons. First, the Iraqi prime minister's sectarianism is no worse than that of most of Iraq's current political leaders; the problem is not one of a single man or faction. Sunni politicians have contributed much to the paralysis in Baghdad. Last month they gave Mr. Maliki a week to meet a broad list of 11 demands, then withdrew from the government when, predictably, he did not deliver. The greatest obstacle to the oil law -- the measure the White House most counted on -- may be the uncompromising stance of Kurdish leaders.
More broadly, the frustration of Americans with Iraqis is based on the assumption that a political reconciliation among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds is achievable within weeks or months. This is wishful thinking, driven by the common desire of the White House and Congress to end or at least wind down the U.S. mission... Mr. Maliki is a poor prime minister, but a change of government would not quickly lead to the elusive accords. The coming debate about the future of the U.S. mission in Iraq needs to grapple with that reality.

Sigh. What can we do in the meantime? Well, there's that petition calling for the British government to give asylum to Iraqis who've worked for the armed forces. Pickled Politics - which, unlike me, was against the war - is just one of the blogs helping to publicize the campaign.