Juan Cole on last week's developments in Iraq

Juan Cole has a new article at Salon on Iraq's worst week - and Bush's 03/01/06. He writes:

The catastrophe in Iraq, the scope of which is now apparent to even the most disengaged observer, and his mishandling of the Dubai port issue have sent President George W. Bush's public approval ratings to the lowest of his presidency. According to a Reuters poll, only 34 percent of Americans believe he is doing a good job overall. Only 30 percent, less than a third, think he is managing the Iraq situation well. A remarkable 72 percent of American troops polled in Iraq think the U.S. should leave Iraq within the next year. Nor is there any hope for Bush on the horizon. The bloody events in Iraq have undermined American authority in that country and in the Middle East more generally. The Shiite clergy of Iran and Iraq have bolstered their own authority at Bush's expense. This development has already severely limited his scope of action in Iran, and will doubtless have many other negative consequences in the months and years ahead.

Tactically, strategically and politically Bush now finds himself in the worst of all possible worlds. With Americans increasingly fed up with the Iraq debacle, he needs to start drawing down troops soon, but he can't do it while the country teeters on the brink of civil war. If civil war does break out, a U.S. withdrawal will look even more like cutting and running -- under these circumstances, not even Karl Rove will be able to figure out a way to get away with simply declaring victory and going home. Yet if American troops stay, they have no good options either. The U.S. desperately needs to keep the Sunnis in the government, but if Shiites launch reprisal attacks against Sunnis, Americans will not be able to respond for fear that the Shiites, too, will turn on them -- as indeed they have already begun to do. And as the shrine bombing shows, Iraq is a vial of nitroglycerine that can be set off with one shake. Imagine what would happen if one of the leading clerics, Sunni or Shiite, was assassinated. It is difficult to say how aware Bush is of the reality in Iraq, but some part of him must be cursing the day he decided to invade it.

The whole article is worth reading.  One comment on the part I just quoted: I don't find it especially surprising that 72% of US soldiers in Iraq would favor a relatively rapid withdrawal.