Is Iraq making political strides?
General Petraeus will cite progress to Congress this week - but it's mostly military.
from the September 10, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Too much stock put in benchmarks?
Other surge advocates say the benchmarks, which reflect US goals of a year ago, should be revised in light of current conditions on the ground or dismissed, but should not be allowed to determine the future US course.
Using the benchmarks to judge the surge at this point in time would ensure US defeat, argues Robert Kagan, a military historian at AEI and an intellectual architect of the surge strategy. "What's not natural is [holding up] this list of benchmarks drawn up in the middle of last year [and saying] we're not meeting them, so to heck with it."
Mr. Kagan is part of a team of Iraq experts who say the "middle way" of beginning a US drawdown soon – before military progress is cemented by further political advances – risks reversing any gains against Islamist extremists and other insurgents.
Other observers, however, say a consensus is beginning to form – among the White House, various factions in the Pentagon, and proponents of a "middle way" in Congress – that the surge's military results allow for and political realities in Washington and Baghdad require some sort of move to begin drawing down US troops by early next year at the latest.
One element of that accommodation will be a plan that allows Bush – who realizes he need no longer fear a Congress bent on a timetable for completing a US withdrawal – to feel he is setting down the plan as he sees fit, some experts say. But another will be acceptance of the reality that Iraq is unlikely to emerge from its political stalemate any time soon.
Noting that "mainstream Democrats aren't talking about pulling the plug either," Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador and now director of Brookings' Saban Center for Mideast Policy, says the US "middle ground" must work with "the basic reality that what we have here is a 10-year conflict between Sunni and Shias." That means, he adds, that for some time to come Iraq's political factions "won't be amenable to a broad comprehensive fix."
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