Resist the urge to leave Iraq
As Petraeus and Crocker know, the U.S. can win if troops remain.
One of the unfortunate consequences of the recent offensive in Basra is that when Army Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker appear before Congress today and Wednesday, their charts will show an uptick in Iraq's violence last month. But that is an anomaly. Violence has already dropped back to pre-March levels, and Iraq is demonstrably more peaceful now than it was before the surge. Civilian deaths are down more than 80% and American deaths are down more than 60% since December 2006.
Faced with this evidence of the surge's military success, critics of the war effort have resorted to claiming that promised political progress has not followed. But even that talking point is outdated. The legislative logjam was broken Jan. 12, when the Iraqi parliament passed a law designed to ease the reintegration of former Baathists into society.
There are still questions about how that law will be implemented, but there is no denying that the parliament made an even more dramatic breakthrough on Feb. 13, when it simultaneously passed a law on provincial powers, a law offering amnesty to many (primarily Sunni) detainees and a new national budget. Although one of Iraq's vice presidents vetoed the provincial-powers law, his veto was withdrawn and the law was approved by Iraq's presidency council. Provincial elections are set for Oct. 1.
According to the U.S. Institute for Peace: "It may be that Feb. 13, 2008, will be remembered as the day when Iraq's political climate began to catch up with its improved security situation -- or, more to the point, when Iraqi leaders discovered the key to political compromise and reconciliation."
Overall, according to Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the government of Iraq "has now met 12 out of the original 18 benchmarks set for it, including four out of the six key legislative benchmarks. It has made substantial progress on five more, and only one remains truly stalled." The one benchmark that remains stalled is the hydrocarbon law, but its purpose (the equitable sharing of oil revenues) is being accomplished de facto through the budget.
This is hardly meant to suggest that everything is suddenly swell. Iraq is still a country at war, with deep problems that will take years to resolve. For every sign of progress, there is a "but" that follows.
