How much does it matter that the Iraqi parliament has not yet passed an oil law? According to war critics, it is the only thing that matters: Iraqis' failure to complete "reconciliation" by passing "benchmark" legislation as required by Washington is evidence not only that the current strategy has failed, but also that any strategy will fail and the United States should simply leave now. Underlying this argument is the belief that a stable peace in Iraq can occur only after the Iraqis have worked out their own basic problems. This is a remarkably unrealistic claim.
The suggestion is that American forces must keep fighting in Iraq until the Arabs and Kurds have put aside their differences, resolved their internal tensions, and started singing "kumbaya" in Arabic. But even the president's most ambitious aims involved only establishing a stable and peaceful democracy in Iraq--which is very different from resolving all tensions, as anyone who knows anything about democracy can tell you. For the United States, reconciliation should mean persuading the peoples of Iraq to address their problems and power struggles peacefully, through a political process rather than through violence, and to reject and oppose those who seek to use force to gain leverage in the political process. That is exactly what we are now in the midst of doing.
This Congressional benchmarking idea has always seemed like a way to provide an excuse for retreat more than anything else. I hope nobody thinks this was an honest effort to pursue victory.
But as this article says, why is reconciliation even a goal? Isn't establishing nonviolent and democratic means to determine how state resources are divided good enough?
For me, the idea of reconciliation is even worse than the article's point of establishing democracy. Since our Left is incapable of reconciling with the President after the perfectly lawful though understandably frustrating 2000 election, who are they to insist that Iraqis reconcile? Some of the Left even believe 2004 was rigged. Others were sure that 2006 would be rigged with those infamous Diebold machines. That claim, at least, as fallen into disrepute given the seemingly impossible wins by Democrats in the House and Senate.
Yet despite a domestic Left's obsession with imaginary crimes in our recent past, Shias and Kurds are supposed to shrug and let go of centuries of Sunni Arab domination and exploitation, decades of Baathist oppression and murder, and years of terrorism? Fascinating.
Democracy so far is enduring in Iraq. Is this not a success we can be proud of achieving without insisting that they do something that we would never enshrine as a national objective?
