The Measure of Things
Congress wrestles with how to judge whether there is progress in Iraq
Such sectarian resentments can also make what has in the past been a closely watched metric-the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces-a dubious measure of progress, say military analysts. "The thing that worries me is not the technical proficiency of the Iraqi police," says Stephen Biddle, a national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "The problem is, who are they fighting for?" It's a concern echoed on Capitol Hill. "Does the growing number of trained and equipped security forces in fact drive the violence in Iraq?" asks a congressional staffer. "We don't know, because we have such poor metrics for tracking these trainees after they graduate."
Conditional. As the House supplemental now stands, the president must present a progress report to Congress by mid-July to collect the remainder of his war funding. A House-Senate conference committee will draft the final version of the bill, but Senate Republicans and many Senate Democrats oppose the House bill's language on conditional funding, since, they say, any progress on the surge will be difficult to determine by summer. Others note that the threat of a U.S. withdrawal of forces may not prove particularly motivational to many Iraqi lawmakers (who, ironically, last week backed draft Iraqi legislation calling for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal). "Is the threat to leave a form of leverage?" asks Biddle. "Or is it giving them what they want?"
On a lobbying trip to Capitol Hill, Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said that his parliament had agreed to cut its summer recess in half and that hydrocarbon laws would be approved by September. As for other benchmarks, he said, "Whether we get all of them in the right time for Washington ... remains to be seen." But congressional eyes are glued to the clock. A Gallup Poll last week showed that while the approval rate for the president's handling of the war is a low 30 percent, congressional Democrats, at 34 percent, don't score much higher. Republicans, at 27 percent, rate even lower.
That means that come September, when General Petraeus must deliver his own progress report to Capitol Hill, Republicans may be more ready to talk about withdrawal. Gates signaled last week that he will reduce forces if he sees "very positive progress" by then. But already military officials are putting out word that such progress will be far from clear cut. "I don't think it's going to be a 'this is working' or 'this isn't.' It's not going to be a thumbs up or down," says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. "There will be lots of areas of gray."
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