Progress

I try to admit I'm wrong when I'm wrong, but I don't like to eat crow any more than the next guy. So when I saw a New York Times headline "Iraq Eases Curb on Ex-Officials of Baath Party" I thought, "uh oh, one of those 'good for the world, bad for Yglesias' turns of events." Unless, of course, like most good news out of Iraq it evaporates upon examination:

While the measure would reinstate many former Baathists, some political leaders said it would also force thousands of other former party members out of current government jobs and into retirement — especially in the security forces, where American military officials have worked hard to increase the role of Sunnis. One member of Iraq’s current de-Baathification committee said the law could even push 7,000 active Interior Ministry employees into retirement. [...]

One Shiite politician, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said the new law could forcibly retire up to 27,000 former Baathists, who would receive pensions.

Other officials said the legislation could allow from 13,000 to 31,000 former Baathists back into the government.

Basically, it's totally unclear how this is going to work in practice and different Iraqi political leaders are making wildly different claims according to their own priorities. Under the circumstances, things could work out for the best, but little has really been achieved here. More to the point, the conflict over what the law says indicates that there isn't any underlying consensus about what ought to be happening, which tends to cast the prospects for reconciliation into doubt.

Meanwhile, though I know the right-wing tends to take every effort to make a realistic assessment of conditions in Iraq as nothing more than ideological axe-grinding, nothing could make me happier than real progress toward political reconciliation in Iraq. Unlike the ephemeral "success" of the surge, reconciliation really would create the conditions under which US forces could withdraw on an uncontroversial note of success and things would be hunky-dory from most all points of view.

Comments

Unlike the ephemeral "success" of the surge...

To judge something ephemeral it has to stop first, no? And why the scare quotes?

By the metrics available to us, and anecdotally, the surge has earned the right to have its 'success' stand free and clear, semantically and syntactically, even if it also stands ephemerally.

Posted by JA | January 13, 2008 9:44 AM

Let John Cole set it straight.

If the new law was good for ex-Baathists, then the ex-Baathists in parliament will have voted for it and praised it, right? And likely the Sadrists (hard line anti-Baath Shiites) and Kurds would be a little upset.

Instead, parliament's version of this law was spearheaded by Sadrists, and the ex-Baathists in parliament criticized it.

Somehow that little drawback suggests to me that the law is not actually, as written, likely to be good for sectarian reconciliation.

http://www.juancole.com/

That's the indirect evidence that there is less good here than meets the eye. The direct evidence is still a bit fuzzy. If the so called government can actually implement anything of substance is another question best left unasked in these days of the glorious surge success.
.

Posted by rapier | January 13, 2008 9:46 AM

Rapier,

About seventy years hence, when everything that's now classified is released and a full history of the Iraq nonsense is written, Sadr is going to be looming even larger in this picture than he has already. In the last year, he's agreed to lay off the execution-style killings of Sunnis and allowed U.S. forces to take down those elements of the JAM that continue said killings.

There have even been reports that Sadr and the upper echelons of the JAM have been co-operating with U.S. forces to root out those elements of the JAM that are answering to Iran rather than to Sadr. In other words, I think that Sadr the Iraqi in some sense trumps Sadr the Shi'ite. So it's not at all inconceivable that Sadr's folks would be pushing for something like reconciliation.

All of the above make me also think that whatever else is going on, behind the scenes the U.S. has made some serious concessions to Muqtada. That, or he's actually trying to move from demagogue to statesman.

Posted by Andrew R. | January 13, 2008 10:09 AM

Andrew, why not read and think a little and avoid sounding like a fool? Al-Sadr would have us leave Iraq today and rightfully so. We have been the demagogues from the beginning.

Posted by Jennifer | January 13, 2008 11:14 AM

How is reinstating former Baathists supposed to help reconciliation?

Denazification in West-Germany was much harsher than what has been proposed in Iraq, but still too lax and enough Nazis were able to hold on to their positions or reinvent themselves in a new guise and this has always been a blemish on the West-German nation until it all blew up in a big shitstorm created by the 68ers who were sick of this travesty.

I happen to agree with their sentiments and those of writers like Boell, Duerrenmatt and Berhnard who relentlessly criticized Nazi holdovers in their societies and described the moral corruption that came with tolerating them. The case of Austria is particularly instructive since they never got around to get to grips with their past and this is haunting their society until the present day.

Posted by novakant | January 13, 2008 11:25 AM

"Berhnard" should read Thomas Bernhard

Posted by novakant | January 13, 2008 11:29 AM

The American people have spoken. They probably don't really care anymore about who is running Iraq, as long as we stop spending our money and lives there. Time to declare victory and leave.

Posted by CParis | January 13, 2008 11:34 AM

The vote was 143-0. There were many people in the Iraq Parliament that did not vote. (They don't have the Obama discretion of voting "present" ) Apparantly, once a majority of the 270 votes is obtained, the preference is to not vote at all.

This is only a 1st step in getting the competent Sunni government people back in. The Shiites can always make things tough for someone returning to their old job, and obviously there will be resistance if some illiterate Shiite militia member is now in that job, screwing it up, but rather fond of his 2333% increase in annual income and not willing to give it up.

The Bremer Decision was a horrific blunder not easy to undo. That is why other "changeouts" of deposed gov't members and professionals seen as not welcome in a new regime were done slowly, cautiously over years. Germany and Japan after WWII, Vietnam's 3-year long purge of S Vietnamese stabbed in the back by the US, and the slow disposition of E German apprachniks and state industry workers and managers, and easing them out with dignity was the successful way. Sometimes we waited on Nazi we wanted to arrest and jail for years until a good replacement was ready. Sometimes we let a certain amount of the bad guys, even war criminals stay on indefinitely because their removal would collapse a ministry or a spy network we wanted to keep up.

The damage Bremer created with a stroke of a pen cannot be undone with a stroke of a pen. But this is a good first start.

The best hope is that Shiites realize that educating and training Shiites to do certain of the jobs is a 5-20 year process, and meanwhile the country must run so everyone benefits - even with Sunni cops and oil engineers and teachers..Everyone in Iraq knows that if they get oil production up that there will be plenty of money and it IS enough to be shared.

The next step, obviously is the Parliament agreement on distribution of oil revenue. They do that and The Surge will have succeeded beyond the worst fears of Al Qaeda and the American Far Left.

*****************
Matt Yglesia, the Black Messiah, Hillary! and countless others counting on the war being lost and the "mandate" they think they have to force a US defeat and retreat have another problem.

Bush is well on the way in negotiations with all 3 key Iraq constituencies to end the UN Occupation Mandate and replace it with a formal Status of Forces Agreement that requires no Senate Treaty approval.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/91651

In another source the SOF has the US staying to
not just finish up the Army and police training, but also leasing at least half dozen "superbases" the US built or rebuilt to provide regional stability in consortia with KSA, the Gulf States, and Turkey and to set up and rebuild the Iraqi Air Force and navy from scratch, a process that
will run 10-15 years. The bases will also be available to provide air and armor response to threats to the Iraqi people and oil fields.
After the Iraq Air Force is up and running, at least 3 of the superbases revert to Iraqi hands.
Hirsch, in the 1st article, says that Admin people say US would keep around 60,000 US personnel there long-term to do the things in the region that we used to do with forces in KSA before Muslims came to general agreement that infidel soldiers in large numbers in the Holy Land was not such a good idea.

Hirsch says the SOF will be hard for any future President to undo until Iraq can protect itself, including from air and naval threats. And that Bush may hand off a year from now with 60,000 to 100,000 US forces stationed there.

***************
Andrew R - Great post on Sadr. As Al Qaeda is now being slaughtered, Iraqis also appear to want to distance themselves from appearing to be Persian Puppets because in the long-term, that could be unhealthy..

Posted by chris ford | January 13, 2008 11:54 AM

"The vote was 143-0."

There is no evidence for this assertion.

"There were many people in the Iraq Parliament that did not vote. (They don't have the Obama discretion of voting "present")"

Heh. They were absent. So they couldn't vote "present," silly boy.

"The damage Bremer created with a stroke of a pen cannot be undone with a stroke of a pen. But this is a good first start."

By forcibly retiring Baathists currently in the government and keeping others out of positions of influence and power? LOL!

"They do that and The Surge will have succeeded beyond the worst fears of Al Qaeda and the American Far Left."

I'll await that with the same anticipation as the first reports of porcine aviation.

"Admin people say US would keep around 60,000 US personnel there long-term to do the things in the region that we used to do with forces in KSA before Muslims came to general agreement that infidel soldiers in large numbers in the Holy Land was not such a good idea."

Are these the same Admin people who predicted a warm welcome of US invading forces? Who predicted we'd find WMDs? Who said Saddam had an active nuclear weapons program? Who said Saddam had a working relationship with al Qaida? Who supported the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the firing of all Baath party government officials? LOL!

"As Al Qaeda is now being slaughtered, Iraqis also appear to want to distance themselves from appearing to be Persian Puppets because in the long-term, that could be unhealthy."

You have a great future as a fiction writer, chris. Everything in your post is fantasy.

Posted by Joel | January 13, 2008 2:40 PM

"How is reinstating former Baathists supposed to help reconciliation?

Denazification in West-Germany was much harsher than what has been proposed in Iraq, but still too lax and enough Nazis were able to hold on to their positions or reinvent themselves in a new guise and this has always been a blemish on the West-German nation until it all blew up in a big shitstorm created by the 68ers who were sick of this travesty.

I happen to agree with their sentiments and those of writers like Boell, Duerrenmatt and Berhnard who relentlessly criticized Nazi holdovers in their societies and described the moral corruption that came with tolerating them. The case of Austria is particularly instructive since they never got around to get to grips with their past and this is haunting their society until the present day.

Posted by novakant | January 13, 2008 11:25 AM"

Apples and oranges. In Germany, all of the major political factions - Nazis, Christian Democrats, Communists - were all mostly filled with ethnic Germans. Ba'athism in Iraq was an ethnic Arab socialist-Stalinist (yet vaguely anti-communist) party that provided a way for Sunnis to rise in society and government, just as how in Syria Ba'athism allows Alawites (Alawis?) to do the same. If the majority of Germans had been Jewish non-ethnic Germans and the Nazis were ethnic Germans, then that comparison would hold. A better comparison would possibly be to Lebanon, where an inability to get the major Sunni, Shi'ite (Hezbollah), Greek Orthodox and Druze (Socialist Party) groups to agree on a common framework for reconciliation and governance.

Posted by Reality Man | January 13, 2008 7:00 PM

"reconciliation really would create the conditions under which US forces could withdraw on an uncontroversial note of success and things would be hunky-dory from most all points of view."

Well, no - at least not from the neocon and Zionist thug and Dick Cheney points of view.

Andrew R has it right. al-Sadr is more a nationalist than an Iranian puppet. He's made efforts to reach out to the Sunni opposition before.

What is going on here is what I've said before.

Iran has pressured the Iranian-backed Shia groups lead by Hakim to cut a deal with al-Sadr. They also hope that al-Sadr will be able to cut some sort of deal with the Sunni insurgency or at least the Sunni community. The goal is to produce a stable Iraqi governing coalition that is at least partially acceptable to Iran, the al-Sadr Shia and the Sunnis (if not the Sunni insurgency).

Whether this will work is not yet known. The problem is Saudi Arabia - see below.

But the target of all this is the elimination of the US occupation, which is Iran's primary interest. It is also al-Sadr's primary interest, and the Sunni's primary interest. The only group in whose interest it is not is the current Iraqi government of Maliki which exists strictly as a US puppet universally despised by the Iraqi population and recognized as mostly useless by al-Sadr and Iran (despite Iran's support for the Shia factions making up part of the government.)

Look to see the Maliki government fall this year as the Iranian Shia groups, al-Sadr and the Sunnis form a coalition to dump the US puppet government.

Then the anti-US insurgency will come roaring back, US troops will be dying by the dozens, and the US will be driven out of Iraq.

After that, the Sunnis and Shia will either work out their differences or go back to killing each other. The US position won't be relevant. It will be Iran vs Saudi Arabia.

According to Michael Scheuer's article in Asia Times over the weekend, bin Laden is aware of this situation and is not happy. bin Laden sees Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgency in general as having defeated the US occupation, but unable to consolidate those gains because of manipulation by Saudi Arabia whose ultimate intent is to install a Sunni government which is a puppet of Saudi Arabia and the US. Scheuer thinks this means bin Laden may have to divert his resources to attack Saudi Arabia full on, causing enough disruption to the oil supplies that the US will send troops there, thus focusing the anger of the Muslim world back on the US. He believes this will lead to further terrorist attacks in the US.

So the situation is that Iran and Saudi Arabia and the US are engaged in a three-way proxy war to control Iraq. In this war, the US is way out of its league in every respect except military might - and that might is almost irrelevant except to aggravate the situation to the detriment of the US.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 13, 2008 8:53 PM

It would be important news if creating a viable Iraqi state independent of the US were actually the point of our presence there.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 13, 2008 10:19 PM

It's happening as I typed. See this Telegraph piece:

Iraqi opposition alliance threatens government
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/14/wiraq114.xml

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 14, 2008 6:59 AM