Incomplete Iraq report will not spur policy change

Jonathan Miller Guest Writer

It has been an ongoing theme of the Iraq war to put false hope in artificial dates and deadlines, as Congress repeatedly promises and fails to set benchmarks to pull out the troops. The latest example of this trend was Bush’s insistence that his surge policy not be questioned until General David Petraeus reported to Congress on its success: “I call upon the United States Congress to give General David Petraeus a chance to come back and tell us whether his strategy is working, and then we can work together on a way forward.” While it is reasonable to give a military strategy time to work, over 200 American soldiers were killed between July (when Bush gave that speech) and the present, along with over 3,000 Iraqi civilians. These thousands of people seem to be brushed off by the administration each time it delays providing a real solution to the Iraq conundrum.

Now that the Petraeus report has come and gone, public discourse on Iraq policy has resumed. The essence of the report was that the situation in Iraq has improved, and that Iraqi security forces are beginning to “shoulder the burden of providing security for their country.” Petraeus deems that the number of security incidents has “decreased significantly” since the surge offenses began, and that the United States “will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge level of brigade combat teams by next summer,” but reminds Congress that the solution will be “neither quick nor easy.”

I have no doubt that Petraeus is telling the truth, but his report handpicks statistics to overemphasize reductions of violence. He acknowledges that civilian deaths are “clearly too high,” but claims they have “declined considerably.” It all depends on the way you interpret the statistics. Petraeus cites that civilian deaths from less natural causes have declined 45 percent since last December. However, he doesn’t cite that the number of civilian deaths increased to 1,809 in August from 1,760 in July, and that car bombingswere five percent higher in July than in December 2006.

Petraeus seems to assume the reduction of violence is a result of the surge. While additional troops may have helped the security situation, Petraeus fails to consider several demographic factors that may also have had a strong influence, including the fact that the number of internationally displaced people from Iraq rose to 1.1 million, with 200,000 from Baghdad. Sectarian cleansing could also have had an effect, according to a National Intelligence Estimate released in August. Petraeus’s declaration that troop numbers will be reduced by next summer is nothing new, as the surge was temporary to begin with, and the army is already stretched thin and in need of relief.

What is the ultimate solution to the situation in Iraq? Bush’s speech after the report offered little in the way of a solution aside from the usual generalities about the war going well, sprinkled with the new slogan “return to success.” The question of which should come first, security or political stability, has become a kind of chicken-or-the-egg issue: Some including General Petraeus, argue that security is necessary for political progress, while others, such as the Iraq Study Group, say that political progress is necessary for security. It appears that the ultimate solution, if there is one, will be diplomatic, negotiating a treaty among the dozens of different factions and convincing Iraq’s neighbors that a permanently destabilized Iraq will not be in their best interest. Petraeus agreed that a military solution was not possible six months ago, stating, “There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency of Iraq.” Yet his report hardly mentions this conclusion.

Despite the necessity of a diplomatic solution, completely pulling troops out of Iraq is not plausible. The institutions thst are currently in place in Iraq aren’t sustainable without military aid, and it would devastate the Middle East to leave a destabilized Iraq to fall to the influence of Iran and Syria, not to mention further erode the reputation of the United States throughout the world. Americans will need to dig in their heels and accept that rebuilding a nation, especially one plagued with ethnic and religious violence, can take decades. If nothing else, perhaps we can learn a lesson about supporting conflict without considering the consequences. President Bush, who admitted to having a minimal reconstruction plan, certainly needs to. From the looks of it, until we make some real diplomatic progress, we will be forever mired in stalemate.