Iraq War: Is peace at hand?

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

It's been clear for a while now that the least bad option for the US forces to exit Iraq would involved some sort of peace agreement between Iraq's Shi'a government and the Sunni and Kurdish political and military forces.  A interim period with significantly reduced violence would allow the Bush administration to declare victory and claim "peace with honor" and bring the troops home.

Tom Hayden has been actively working to promote peace talks to achieve the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.  His take on the current peace proposals from Iraq's Shi'a-dominated government is that they may be an arrangement by which the Bush administration requested the Shi'a government to put forward a demand of some sort for US troop withdrawals.  He also thinks it could reflect the intense unpopularity of the US in Iraq.  He writes in Breaking Iraq News CommonDreams.org 06/25/06:

Until recently, the American media has remained inexplicably low-keyed towards this peace sentiment among high-ranking Iraqis. For example, the June 2005 public letter by Iraq parliamentarians was reported only by Knight-Ridder in this country. Whatever the reasons, the lack of public discussion perpetuates the illusion that American soldiers are dying to protect a majority of Iraqis who want us to stay. To borrow a phrase, it would be an Inconvenient Truth to report that the US embassy is having difficulty maintaining the loyalty of the very regime they helped install.

Most likely, a contradiction is unfolding within the American political hierarchy and national security establshment over whether this war is winnable. It also is a question of maintaining the American power posture, or its appearance. Those who know the war will end in defeat or quagmire favor a political strategy aimed at cutting losses, channeling the insurgency into talks and removing the issue from American politics in 2006. Others cling to the goal of eventually subduing the insurgency militarily and maintaining 50,000 troops permanently in Iraq.

He doesn't discuss in this article the Shi'a government's calculation of how useful the US is at this point in helping them in their civil war against the Sunnis and, increasingly, the Kurds.  As long as the US forces primarily focus their efforts against Sunni guerrillas and Kurds (to the extent they are fighting the Kurds at all), the Shi'a government is unlikely to want the American troops to leave.  But when they figure the US presence is more of a hindrance than a help, they'll begin to serious demand withdrawals.

It's not at all clear that such a thing is happening with the current peace proposals.

Juan Cole is skeptical about this round (Informed Comment 06/25/06):

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented a 28-point reconciliation plan to parliament on Sunday.

Al-Hayat reports that Malik views this initiative as a privilege of the executive and that he does not intend to have parliament vote on it. A Shiite parliamentarian said ti was outrageous to by-pass parliament in this way. Also, significant elements within al-Maliki's own United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite) are disturbed by the idea of granting amnesty to Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The problem is quite the other way around. The amnesty is not extended to anyone who has "shed Iraqi blood," and the Bush administration made al-Maliki back off the idea of granting amnesty to guerrillas who had killed US troops.

But if the point of the amnesty is to bring the guerrilla leadership in from the cold, this amnesty is useless. What Sunni Arab guerrillas worth their salt have killed no Iraqis and no US troops? As for the rest, why would Sunnis who had not killed anyone need to be amnestied? And wouldn't they be rather pitiful guerrillas?

This is like Kissinger saying he would talk to the North Vietnamese but not to any of them who helped the VC kill ARvN and US soldiers. There wouldn't have been any round table talks (not that that whole thing went very well anyway. Just saying.)

It appears that the main point of the "reconciliation" is not in fact to reconcile with the guerrilla movement. It is an attempt to draw off support from it by rehabilitating the Sunni Arabs who had been Baath party members. Those who had not actively killed anyone would now be brought back into public life and deep debaathification would be reversed, as I read it. (Ironically, al-Maliki led the charge for deep debaathification in the past 3 years!) Sunni Arabs would be compensated for losses inflicted on them by Iraqi and US troops (this is key to settling clan feuds against the new order). Shiite militias are to be disbanded. Militia influence in Iraqi police to be curbed. etc.

The plan also hopes to separate out the ex-Baathists from the Qutbists, who style themselves "Salafi Jihadis" but actually are just violent vigilantes, who, in the tradition of Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, blithely brand as non-Muslims worthy of death anyone who disagrees with their version of Islam. The Qutbists are coded as mainly foreigners.

(For more on Qutb, see my Sayyid Qutb post of 09/14/04.

To summarize, Cole thinks the plan is aimed more at reversing the de-Baathification process than at really reaching a settlement with the guerrillas.

Then there's the latest "big pullout coming next year" pitch:  Report: Gen. Casey plans to reduce Iraq force in 2007: Number of U.S. brigades would be cut from 14 to 5 by Jeff Schogol Stars and Stripes Mideast edition 06/26/06.  My response to this is, big whoop.  We've heard it all before.  When it actually happens, then I'll start believing it.

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05