by Frank James
Congressional Democrats and Democratic presidential candidates who are arguing for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq will have to contend with an op-ed piece in the New York Times that has gotten a lot of attention in Washington today and will for weeks to come.
The piece about Iraq is headlined “A War We Just Might Win” and it was the equivalent of kicking the legs out from under the anti-Iraq war faction within the Democratic establishment by two people within that very establishment.
The two military and security analysts behind the piece, both at the Brookings Institution, have deep Democratic ties. Kenneth Pollack worked in the National Security Council in the Clinton White House, and Michael O’Hanlon, among other things, advised the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry.
Pollack, incidentally, wrote “The Threatening Storm” the book in which he argued in the runup to the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was a very real threat in part because he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Well, everyone now knows how that turned out.
In any event, Pollack and O’Hanlon returned from a recent eight-day trip to Iraq in which they found that the situation on the ground had improved markedly from past visits.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
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After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
The piece goes on to mention the significant improvements in the Iraqi army as well as the willingness of Iraqi citizens to stand against the jihadists and militias after becoming fed up with being abused by those groups.
True, the Iraqi politicians can’t seem to get their acts together. But a lot is going right in Iraq, the men say.
This leads the two men to conclude their piece with this:
How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.
The problem for Democrats in Congress and those running for president is that Pollack and O’Hanlon are very respected in Washington. So they will be hard to ignore.
The White House will likely use this latest analysis to buttress its request for patience from Congress and the American people and to show that any sudden withdrawal would be irresponsible.
Also, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of Americans don’t want a quick pull out from Iraq if that means increased chaos in that country and the region.
So while it may appeal to the most anti-war base of the Democratic Party to talk of immediate draw-downs and letting the Iraqis handle their own civil war, Pollack and O’Hanlon have ensured that when congressional leaders and presidential candidates throw out such applause lines, they will be challenged and not with President Bush’s words but those of two of the best-known, security-minded Democrats in Washington.