The contrast between the solemn US president who addressed the American people Tuesday night and the man who, just over two years ago, stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and announced that the combat in Iraq was at an end, could hardly have been greater.
Bush is on the political ropes, his domestic reputation bleeding faster than his soldiers in Iraq. Even the once most gung-ho of his hawkish advisers now predict it will take years for the US to defeat the insurgency in Iraq. This may not be a conflict that ordinary Americans are going to stand for very much longer so the president Tuesday played his last card — that if Washington gave a time and date for its Iraqi disengagement — it would be a major victory for the terrorists.
Only one thing that the triumphalist George Bush told the world from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln 25 months ago has turned out to be absolutely correct. That was his assertion that “the tide of the war on terror is turning”. It was, but not in the direction Bush anticipated. The invasion of Iraq gave Al-Qaeda both an abundance of US targets and a fresh cause, the ejection of occupying Americans from an Arab country. They have made bloody use of both.
But Washington’s problems are nothing compared with those being faced by Iraqis, victims of an insurgency growing stronger every day as well as periodic US bombing raids aimed at terrorists but killing mostly innocent civilians.
The Americans cannot solve the violence because they are part of the problem. There is still however the chance that the Iraqis can do it for themselves.
Two key steps are necessary. A rapid agreement on a constitution that strongly reflects the interests of all Iraqi communities is absolutely essential.
So too is the rapid inclusion of all local militias within the Iraqi military and police. The Kurdish fighters of the Pesh Merga, the Shiite Sadr Brigade and their ilk simply cannot continue as insurance policies against communal division, because they will hasten, not prevent, the very break-up they are designed to protect against.
If the majority in the transitional government are serious about a united and free Iraq, they must look to defending themselves and dispensing with American help as quickly as possible. So long as they remain divided, so long will the Americans remain and so long will high-octane fuel be available to Al- Qaeda to spray onto the terrible conflict.
The Iraqi government must find a way to reach the greater part of the Sunni community. America’s key role in this process will be to facilitate the thorough but rapid training and equipment of further Iraqi troops and police. But will Bush ever admit that while America, for all its power, cannot defeat itself the insurgency in Iraq, truly united, the Iraqis very probably can?
