Can Iraq be Fixed?
Politicians dance around this question, but here's the reality: It will take U.S. troops years of work, and success is hardly a sure bet
July was supposed to have been, at long last, a good month for the U.S. effort in Iraq. A new unity government was fully formed and at work. The feared terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi was dead. And U.S. and Iraqi officials had launched a new security plan to stanch the bloodshed in Baghdad. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Rather, Baghdad in July has been wilder and more dangerous than ever, engulfed by a wave of targeted assassinations, reprisal attacks, and mass kidnappings. When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Washington last week, the air was not celebratory but instead one of crisis. The primary outcome: a decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in Baghdad.
That news is distressing to those Americans already restless to bring troops home and may fuel doubts among some who want to see the job through. The Iraq venture has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers and marines and cost upwards of $300 billion. Yet, the political debate in Washington seems strangely divorced from reality. Several Democrats call for a withdrawal timetable, as if victory can simply be scheduled. Republicans, led by the Bush administration, pledge that America will stay until the job is done, without making clear what, exactly, that means or how long it may take. In the end, neither side really faces up to the most fundamental questions: Is there really a way out of Iraq that will not send the country into deeper chaos? Will America be able to leave an Iraqi government behind that can survive and sustain itself? And how many more years will U.S. troops need to be in Iraq to get to that point?
The underlying problem is evident: A speedy withdrawal is the surest way to plunge the nation into a full civil war, but staying longer carries a high cost without necessarily improving the odds of success. "Leaving too soon would have enormous potential downside--that this unity we are trying to build could unravel, that sectarian violence could escalate," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, tells U.S. News. "That could bring in other powers on opposite sides, therefore expanding the war to places outside of Iraq. Terrorists could take over a region like Anbar and use it as a base to threaten the world." Wayne White, who was the State Department's top intelligence analyst on Iraq, shares those worries, but adds, "What we don't know is what the odds will be one, two, five years from now."
Workload. If the near-term perils are clear, the definition of success is harder to pin down. On one level, it hinges on leaving behind a capable Iraqi government. This entails not only reliable security forces but also a government that can supply those troops and deliver basic services to the Iraqi people. Today, these tasks require deep U.S. involvement--and it will take much longer for Iraqis to pick up the workload than the Bush administration or most political leaders in Washington are willing to admit publicly. "To build something that can outlast us, we're talking about being there at least another five years," says Sen. Joseph Biden, who returned from his seventh trip to Iraq in July. "If we were doing it well and we had a little luck, we could be there in a circumstance where we are not dying but we are spending."
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