Iraq is Still the Other Shoe

Much of attention in the presidential race has lately gone to the economy. Most of the rest has gone to the increasingly nasty war of insults that continues to drag both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama down and threatens to mire both of them irretrievably in the muck. There is another war that has been somewhat on the back burner for awhile, but which could at any time return front and center to dominate the campaign and largely determine its outcome. That, of course, is the War in Iraq.

Iraq leaves the candidates of both parties at the mercy of events they cannot control. John McCain believes the war must continue and can be won. He was calling for more troops even before President Bush announced the surge. In early to mid 2007, when violence was widespread and American military and Iraqi civilian casualties remained high, McCain languished far behind in the Republican field. When the situation began to improve so did his popularity. As long as things go relatively well in Iraq he will claim credit for "being right" and reap the benefits. But should the situation degenerate back to chaotic levels the principal reason for his candidacy will be dashed and he will likely go down to crushing defeat in November.

The opposite dynamic holds true for Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Though Clinton initially voted for the war authorization back in 2002, both are identified now with wanting to wind down American involvement. If violence stays relatively low Iraq will recede as a strong motivator for their election. But if it ratchets back up again the American people, already disenthralled with the conflict, will look to the Democrats with renewed urgency. John Kerry was unable to defeat Pres. Bush in 2004 before the insurgency had dragged on long enough to exhaust the American peoples' patience. By 2006, with both insurgency and incipient civil war well underway the GOP suffered a landslide repudiation in the midterms. The same dynamic will be in play this summer and fall.

In the past few days Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki has directed forces to Basra, heart of the nation's oil fields and stronghold of rival Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Clashes are underway there and in Baghdad between the rival factions, with the Sadrists using the renewed hostilities to fire dozens of rockets into the US-occupied Green Zone on the banks of the Tigris. The cease-fire has been broken, and now we shall see whether the renewed fighting spirals to the levels of 2006 and 2007. John McCain desperately hopes not. His presidential prospects will rise or fall based on the complicated and volatile rivalries between a minority president, a radical mullah, assorted tribal sheiks, a collection of Baathist retreads and a few hundred foreign Sunni fanatics eleven thousand miles away. Such is the reality of American politics in 2008.