The New Normal in Iraq

I’m not at all encouraged about the security gains in Iraq. Most people would say that’s because I’m a liberal, anti-war blogger who hates George Bush, but that’s not true.

Well, yes it is true, but that’s not why I’m not encouraged. Remember, I supported the surge. You can time-travel back in my archive to January and still read why I thought we had a responsibility to Iraq to give it one last, best shot. So unlike other liberal anti-war bloggers who hate George Bush, I at least wanted to see the surge succeed. And to a limited degree, it has.

It’s great that violence is down by about two-thirds. Fewer Americans are dying. Far fewer Iraqis are dying. It’s possible, apparently, to send your kids to school, drive from one part of town to another—don’t push your luck here—or even go to the mosque for prayers without a high level of certainty you will be blown up or shot or have your head used for wood-shop practice with electric drills.

But let’s face it: Iraq is still one of the most violent and dangerous places on earth. No one would dream of booking a vacation there any time soon, except perhaps the entire Iraqi legislature, which once again is going on vacation rather than address any of the multiple benchmarks the Bush administration itself set to measure political progress. That was the whole idea behind the surge in the first place, to buy time for the government to begin to make progress in certain key areas, without which a lasting peace in Iraq, we all agree, is impossible.

This time, two months off sounds about right.

Last week, seven soldiers based out of Ft. Lewis, Washington died. That’s a big hit to take in a single unit. Casualties may be down overall, but our professional military continues to bear a terrible burden while the rest of us bear no burden at all here at home. Here in Oregon, 3,500 National Guard troops are on notice that they’re headed for Iraq in the summer of `09. Not `08, `09. The military needs to plan well ahead, and apparently it’s plans don’t involve much of a drawdown in Iraq.

Meanwhile, with amazingly little comment in the media, Bush and Al-Maliki have signed an agreement for permanent American bases in Iraq. Is this something we had to take care of right now, before we get too busy with cleaning out the rain gutters or something? (Today I’m cleaning out the rain gutters on the back side of the house. It means going up a two-story extension ladder and it’s scary, but I don’t have a list of things I absolutely have to get done before I go up, like, say, reach an agreement for permanent US military bases in Iraq. I do need to get a flu shot, and I have a call in about that, but I can get started on the rain gutters while I’m waiting to hear back.)

The new normal in Iraq is an immense improvement over the old normal of the last four, going-on-five years, but surprisingly, the same two-thirds of Americans who wanted us out of Iraq before the surge still want us out now. This surprises me because I thought some sign of progress in Iraq might translate into at least a small increase in support for George here at home, but it hasn’t. Bush has been too wrong for too long about Iraq, and apparently very few Americans have become convinced that he either knew what he was doing all along or somehow finally blundered into strategy that might lead to success.

What would encourage me is a huge diplomatic initiative to try to pressure the Iraqi government to use this relatively quiet interlude to make progress on some of its political problems. There seems to be no indication of that happening. Instead, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is in the Middle East trying to downplay the intelligence reports that Iran isn’t actually working on an atomic bomb anymore.

Only in the Bush administration would this be greeted as bad news.