Really Thinking About Iraq

General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will testify to Congress this week on the situation in Iraq. Reports say they will recommend that current U.S. military force levels be maintained until September, pending another reassessment of the situation at that time.

Presidential candidates John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are all returning from the campaign trail to Washington to participate in the hearings, McCain and Clinton with the Armed Services Committee and Obama on Foreign Relations. All can be expected to frame their questions so as to buttress their election positions-McCain's that the war should continue to be prosecuted vigorously until victory is won and the Democrats' that Iraq is militarily unsolvable and that a gradual withdrawal should be commenced. If another round of hearings takes place in September, just two months before the election, it will be even more highly politicized.

Americans would do well to step back from the rhetoric and do some hard thinking about Iraq. They might want to ask what America's realistically achievable interests in Iraq are. Visions of a shining democracy are not in that picture. The country is a kaleidoscope of ethnic, tribal and sectarian blocs, all possessing their own armed militias. They will battle for power the old-fashioned way as soon as the U.S. leaves, whether that takes place in two years or twenty. It is the fear of this melee occurring on their watch that has both Clinton and Obama talking of gradual withdrawal, in the longshot hope that somehow it can be averted or at least postponed. Such an approach is like the child who is afraid to take the bandage off and does it a millimeter at a time, prolonging the agony.

We can hope the eventual government is not a partner of Iran, but that is problematical too. The Shiite Muslims are the majority there. Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation. Both major Shiite factions, the Dawa Party of President al-Maliki and the Mahdi Army of mullah al-Sadr, are friendly with Iran. If one of these groups gains power after independence, will their Iraqi nationalism overcome their religious affinity? No one knows.

The alternative, however, is little better. We could support a Sunni Muslim return to power. The upside is that they have no love for Iran on either religious or nationalistic grounds. But the Sunnis are in the minority, constituting perhaps 20% of the population. Saddam Hussein was of this group. The only way the minority is likely to stay on top is through the kinds of totalitarian methods Saddam used, rather brutally suppressing the majority Shiites to keep them quiet.

No, at a minimum, and that is all that can with any intellectual honesty be hoped for, U.S. interests are that Iraq not become a base and haven for international terrorism. Yet it is the very presence of foreign occupiers in an Arab land that, according to the Iraq Study Group, every other independent study and even most American governmental and military studies, inspires resentment and provides recruits for the jihadi extremists. It was not American power but the fact that Iraq's Sunni tribes turned on them for their barbaric atrocities that has put al Qaeda in Iraq on the run.

Thus McCain's preferred policy is flawed too. By its very nature it strengthens the Islamist camp and does nothing to reconcile Iraq's swirling militia factions. All it does is keep the lid on and play for time while the losses mount and the billions evaporate. And time is not infinite. Just last week General Richard Cody, Vice-Chief of the Army Staff and former commander of the 101st Airborne Division, testified to the Senate Armed Forces Committee. He said:

"Today's Army is out of balance. The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply, and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies.... Soldiers, families, support systems and equipment are stretched and stressed.... Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it. If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the all - volunteer force and degrades the Army's ability to make a timely response to other contingencies."

Perhaps Joe Biden's favored alternative, an Iraq partitioned or federalized into its three primary component parts, offers the best chance for stability. A Kurdish North, Sunni Center and Shiite South, sharing the oil revenues, would give each group autonomy in its own region and provide them a financial incentive to stay out of each other's business. The U.S., at any rate, does not control events there and can do little beyond what the Iraqis themselves wish to do. A transition appears to be long overdue.