Members of parliament are calling for more efforts to curb corruption (which is stifling the economy and crippling the government). International surveys indicate that Iraq is the third most corrupt country on the planet. It's gotten so bad that even the public schools are mired in corruption. There are no indications that the corruption will be appreciably diminished anytime soon.
I've long flogged the issue that Strategypage has raised, that rule of law is the threat to deal with after the armed threats are subdued.
We've mostly beaten the al Qaeda, Baathist, and Sadrist threats. The Arab-Kurdish threat is a potential right now.
Corruption means that the Iraqi government's ability to finally crush the reduced armed threats is crippled. And the government may not have the capacity to prevent a conflict over the Arab-Kurd divide. And of course, the people will lose any incentive to be anything but corrupt themselves in their private dealings if the government structure just becomes a way for the connected to steal from the unconnected.
We need a surge of FBI, police, and judiciary advisors in Iraq to help the Iraqis catch and prosecute the corrupt politicians and government employees before the erode Iraq from within.
It is still a success if Iraq becomes a friendly authoritarian state given what it replaced, but that is only a tactical success.
To make Iraq a strategic success, it needs to be an example for other Moslem states that they have more than a choice between autocracy and an Islamic republic.
Right now, failure in Iraq would be a self-inflicted wound. We need to stay engaged in Iraq. Let's not walk away only see all that we've done unravel.
