Good Ideas

Looks like General Petraeus is having meetings with some of Muqtada al-Sadr's people which is the right thing to do in the context of any kind of overall strategy, though it doesn't change the fact that the overall strategy is still wrong.

Meanwhile, I don't know if "ironic" is the right word for it, but it's noteworthy that the key things Petraeus has started doing in 2007 are just things that the right would have labeled treasonous policies of "retreat and defeat" back in 2004 and 2005. Back then, holding direct talks with insurgent groups and trying to reach compromises with them was anathema even though back then this kind of compromise-oriented approach had much better prospects for success since the sectarian wells hadn't already been poisoned by the extreme sectarian violence of the intervening years.

Comments

Matt,

In 2004 and 2005 American diplomats, spies and officers did meet with lots of local insurgents. Sadr, as you might remember, was encouraged to participate in the 2005 elections, and was praised in 2004 after backing off from his siege of Karbala. In 2005, there was the Cairo conference. Everyone in your corner praised Khalilzad for meeting with "sunni nationalists." So your point is exactly what?

Eli

Posted by Eli Lake | November 13, 2007 10:48 AM

"Back then, holding direct talks with insurgent groups and trying to reach compromises with them was anathema..."

I seem to remember military attempts a couple of years back to hold discussions with insurgent groups (or their proxies) in an attempt to split non-AQI groups from AQI. I don't remember a lot of criticism of this approach. I know it's impossible for you to write a post acknowledging progress in Iraq without criticizing something, but this sort of double-entry punditry is leading you to spurious conclusions.

Posted by Fred | November 13, 2007 10:51 AM

Strike three. With all due respect to the enormous geo-strategic expertise of Field Marshal Yglesius, getting your facts straight would be a really good thing.

Someone who can't remember all the things we tried, and all the people we killed, between 1991 and 2003 in a seemingly endless attempt to make the Saddam problem go away without actually taking direct responsibility for the situation, is in no position to tell someone like Petraeus that "the overall strategy is wrong".

Posted by Robert Powell | November 13, 2007 11:16 AM

Surely Eli Lake appreciates that there is a difference with Petraeus' new strategy, and that aggressive and systematic efforts to broker these kinds of deals with some of our adversaries is a key part of what is misnamed "bottom-up reconciliation". And I think Matt's point can be extended and generalized: I think one of the under-reported dimensions of Petraeus' success so far is the extent to which it has come at the expense of pre-standing Bush administration policies and objectives in Iraq. Matt is missing the fact that "the overall strategy" is not even national reconciliation anymore, it is rather squeezing a few minimal (though still unlikely) concessions out of the Maliki goverment and devolving huge amounts of power to the localities, cutting as many deals as we can, and giving the national government largely the job of distributing oil money and (with improved security forces) policing the seams of the sectarian divides in various parts of the country. And that's it. This is, under the circumstances, the best hope for keeping Iraq from being an AQ safe haven, avoiding genocide, and minimizing the prospects for regional war while stemming Iranian efforts for more power. And that's it. Forget all that other stuff Bush likes to spout on about; Petraeus' potential success is Bush's failure.

Posted by Jeff | November 13, 2007 11:24 AM

Meanwhile, I don't know if "ironic" is the right word for it

Uh, no, it's not. Maybe some things happened between 2004 and 2007 that made the change in policy appropriate? What a Russert-ish post this is.

[Matthew Yglesias, circa 1945: The US is now talking to Japan, even though they didn't talk in 1941. What hypocrites!]

Posted by Al | November 13, 2007 12:14 PM

Al, are you implying the insurgents have unconditionally surrendered?

Posted by mad6798j | November 13, 2007 12:18 PM

[Al, circa 1945: Japan is now talking to the US, even though they didn't talk in 1941. What hypocrites!]

Posted by James Gary | November 13, 2007 12:23 PM

The usual suspects surface...

Matt is correct. Two or three years ago, the US may have tried to make contact with some of the various factions, but they were busy trying to destroy al-Sadr.

The only two reasons US casualties are down somewhat in the last two months are because al-Sadr has stood down his militia for his own reasons, and because US troops have adopted a policy of "search and avoid" - meaning they're basically mutinying against orders.

Matt's main point, though, is that the right wing freaks would have denounced the moves Petraeus is making today two years ago.

It doesn't matter. The US is merely playing a PR game to try to convince the public to let Bush base troops there forever. They're building a military base on top of one of the oil terminal platforms, showing where the real interest lies.

In the end, it still won't work out. As soon as Bush attacks Iran, the whole thing will collapse like a sand castle at high tide.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 13, 2007 1:01 PM

These guys are right MY. Talks were going on through most of last year. This is old news:

Amman, December 10, 2006

SECRET talks in which senior American officials came face-to-face with some of their most bitter enemies in the Iraqi insurgency broke down after two months of meetings, rebel commanders have disclosed.

The meetings, hosted by Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s former prime minister, brought insurgent commanders and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, together for the first time.

After months of delicate negotiations Allawi, a former Ba’athist and a secular Shi’ite, persuaded three rebel leaders to travel to his villa in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to see Khalilzad in January.

"The meetings came about after persistent requests from the Americans. It wasn’t because they loved us but because they didn’t have a choice," said a rebel leader who took part.

Last week the long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker, the former secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, a former congressman, called for America to seek to engage with all parties in Iraq, with the exception of Al-Qaeda.

However, the insurgents’ account of the hushed-up meetings reveals that concerted attempts to engage them in negotiations had already failed earlier this year.

Hopes were high when the insurgent leaders greeted Khalilzad in Amman. The Iraqis had just held their first democratic elections for a permanent government and the US ambassador hoped to broker an enduring political settlement.

Feelers had been put out to Iraqi insurgents before but not at such a high level. "The Americans had been flirting with such meetings for a while, but they needed to sit down with people who carried more weight in the insurgency," said one leader of the National Islamic Resistance, an umbrella organisation representing some of the main insurgent groups.

The trio of Iraqi negotiators claimed to represent three-quarters of the "resistance". It included Ansar al- Sunnah, the group responsible for a suicide bombing that killed 22 in a US army canteen in Mosul in December 2004, and also the 1920 Revolution Brigade, which has carried out many kidnappings and claimed to have shot down a British Hercules aircraft near Tikrit in January 2005, in which 10 people died.

At the first meeting with Khalilzad on January 17, the insurgents expressed concern about the emergence of Iran as a new regional power. With America equally worried about Iranian interference, the two sides appeared to have found some common ground. The talks continued in Baghdad for about eight weeks, sometimes on consecutive days at Allawi’s home.

Posted by Campesino | November 13, 2007 1:38 PM

I wonder if five years from now former liberal hawks like Matt and the guy who looks like he could be Ezra's big brother will re-recant and go back to being in favor of the war in Iraq.

Posted by Fred | November 13, 2007 5:05 PM

I wonder if five years from now former liberal hawks like Matt and the guy who looks like he could be Ezra's big brother will re-recant and go back to being in favor of the war in Iraq.
=================================================

You may be right. They are so busy moving the goalposts for "success" around to justify their change of heart they may just roll them all the way back to the other end of the field

Posted by Campesino | November 13, 2007 5:26 PM

Muqtada al-Sadr

I never hear that name without reproducing Saddams' accompanying snort of derision in my mind . . .

Posted by rea | November 13, 2007 7:11 PM

I wonder if five years from now former liberal hawks like Matt and the guy who looks like he could be Ezra's big brother will re-recant and go back to being in favor of the war in Iraq.

If the war somehow goes on another 5 years, even the likes of you fools won't dare to defend it in public.

Posted by rea | November 13, 2007 7:14 PM

It doesn't matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel I'll convey
Some inner truth or vast reflection
But I've said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don't matter who you are
If I'm doing my job then it's your resolve that breaks.

Matt, I like the original version better, but at least you're trying.

Posted by JA | November 13, 2007 7:22 PM

"If the war somehow goes on another 5 years, even the likes of you fools won't dare to defend it in public."

If Democrats thought that, they wouldn't keep trying to legislate a rapid pull-out from Iraq; on the contrary, they know that the more time the U.S. military is given in Iraq, the greater the chance that the war will ultimately be viewed as successful.

Posted by Fred | November 13, 2007 9:57 PM

on the contrary, they know that the more time the U.S. military is given in Iraq, the greater the chance that the war will ultimately be viewed as successful.

But of course that's true, since the whole game at this point is to hope the Iraqis reach a political reconciliation while we're still occupying the country. If that happens, it's a "win" for us, while if the exact same reconciliation occurs after we leave, it's a "loss."

That's why the entire goal of the pro-war side is to buy as much time as they can. Drag it out in hopes of claiming "victory," even though the outcome is in the hands of the Iraqis either way. I personally don't believe in sacrificing the lives of young men and women just so Bush can call it a win, though.

Posted by Steve | November 14, 2007 2:31 AM

A "win" in Iraq doesn't require the creation of an Athenian democracy, or DisneyWorld on the Euphrates. It requires a reasonably stable, reasonably pro-Western state at peace with its neighbors, not working on wmd's, and pumping oil. While this may not seem "worth it" to those who imagine that our entire engagement in Iraq was ginned up out of thin air by a group of deviants in the White House after the 2000 elections, the majority of Americans (who don't suffer from partisanship-induced amnesia, and have at least a rudimentary grasp of the Persian Gulf region's strategic importance) know better.

Democrats who still think we deserve to lose, or at least find any exercise of US power abroad automatically doomed to failure, are a drag on the future electoral prospects of the party.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 14, 2007 4:21 AM

"If Democrats thought that, they wouldn't keep trying to legislate a rapid pull-out from Iraq; on the contrary, they know that the more time the U.S. military is given in Iraq, the greater the chance that the war will ultimately be viewed as successful"

Fred,

What empirical basis do you have for this conclusion? Our history in Iraq has so far show tne opposite pattern. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the war was viewed as extremely successufl, but as time has worn on, the public has increasingly viewed the war as a failure.

What basis do you have for believing that this trend will reverse? No political reconciliation has taken place in Iraq, and as long as there is no political reconciliation, the sectarian civil war in Iraq will continue. The longer we Americans see our troops involved in a sectarian civil war that is unrelated to our national security concerns, the more likely it is that the war will viewed overall as a failure in both the short and long term.

This is especially true since the much touted success of the surge in crushing and destroying thre presence of Al Qaeda in Irag gives our troops even less reason to stay. As the sectarian civil war loses its remaining tenous links to Al Qaeda, the national security rationale for our continued occupation of Iraq disappears. The longer our troops stay involved in a war that has ultimately no bearing on our national security (as in Vietnam), the greater the American public's perception of failure will be of the Iraq war.

No, Fred, the reality is that the Democrats can clearly see that the President's strategy is a failure that is needlessly killing or maiming our troops, and that to allow the President to continue prosecuting his ill-conceived war strategy is wrong. It is the Republicans whose actions are motivated by politics; if they can run out the clock until January 2009, then the Republican President won't suffer the humiliation of having to admit that his strategy didn't work.

Posted by eltoro | November 14, 2007 3:48 PM

"A "win" in Iraq doesn't require the creation of an Athenian democracy, or DisneyWorld on the Euphrates. It requires a reasonably stable, reasonably pro-Western state at peace with its neighbors, not working on wmd's, and pumping oil."

Robert Powell,

How is this relatively modest goal going to be achieved while there is a SECTARIAN CIVIL WAR going on in Iraq, especially when our occupation of Iraq has done nothing to stop the dynamic promoting this war, and may in fact make the dynamic promoting civil war even more powerful?

Posted by eltoro | November 14, 2007 3:52 PM

eltoro-- "this relatively modest goal" would be a dramatic improvement over the status quo antebellum, not only for the US but for Iraq, the region, and the world in general. It is certainly not one that can be defined in simple-minded Republicans vs Democrats terms, although I suppose Fred is right about the minority of Democrats who seem determined to unintentionally undermine the electoral prospects of the party as they have done since 1968. I remain convinced that average American voters (the majority of whom don't define themselves as either Repubs or Dems) understand that things like major wars are not going to be easy, quick, or without cost.

Your analysis of the power struggle going on in Iraq seems to me entirely inadequate. A look at the history of collapsed totalitarian states, which we have a number of fairly recent examples of in the former Soviet Empire, indicates that there is often a bloody contest for control that in the environment of systematically destroyed civil society tends to latch on to whatever small-group identifications remain. This has turned out to be in all cases much less a function of "age-old animosities" than simple opportunism by ambitious would-be dictators. Current trends in Iraq, while far from conclusive, indicate significant progress and reason for guarded optimism.

This is simply too important to walk away from, and I am not one who thinks that, having exhausted all the other options, Americans won't be able to do the right things to help. If you take a look at what South Korea looked like in the '50's, it may provide some useful perspective.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 15, 2007 2:35 AM