Saw this in the Daily Star of Lebanon – a somewhat pro-western (but by no means pro-Bush) publication. The writer asks the question: “Are things coming together for George W. Bush in Iraq?”

One key factor is that, for the first time since the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, Arab Sunni leaders are backing a US military plan for that country. These Sunni leaders live in abject fear of the geopolitical earthquake that any disintegration of political authority in Baghdad would bring. They believe that all-out civil war would invariably follow – a war that would not respect international borders.

Of course, America has been encouraging Sunni leaders in this belief. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent tour of Middle East capitals helped spread the word to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states that any US failure and sudden withdrawal would be certain to destabilize them. Given the fragile grip that these leaders have over their societies, America’s warnings have been taken to heart.

But the truly curious factor that might bring success to Bush is that those who have opposed or resented America’s presence in Iraq, such as the Iranian-backed Shiite parties, now also appear to want Bush’s new strategy to succeed. They are for it because they believe it will defang Moqtada al-Sadr, the rogue Shiite cleric whose power has mushroomed over the past three years – to the point that he now dominates much of Baghdad and holds the allegiance of countless angry young Shiite men.

This makes the Administration resistance to a regional conference on Iraq all the more troubling. I actually thought the conference idea was one of the only real positive proposals put forth by the Baker Commission. It seems to me that other players in the region who would be directly affected by the kind of pullout envisioned by the Democrats are eager to explore ways to tamp down the violence and help make the Iraqi state viable.

This must hold true especially for Syria and Jordan who are being drowned by a human tidal wave of Sunni refugees from Iraq – more than 2.3 million so far. This doesn’t include the more than half a million displaced Sunnis inside Iraq already – a number that Maliki absolutely must bring down dramatically if our surge policy is to succeed.

But what about the Shias?

Of course, attacking Sadr’s Mehdi Army in the name of fighting militia death squads has the potential to draw American military forces into a level of urban warfare unseen since the Falluja assaults of 2004 and 2005. Sadr is seen as the protector of the Shiites of Iraq and has an estimated 60,000 fighters in his militia. But he is deeply mistrusted by other Shiite leaders, who fear that they may one day have to take him on by themselves. Better to let the Americans do it, though of course these Shiite leaders prefer a slow strangulation of Sadr to a direct and bloody assault.

But make no mistake: How Sadr is handled is the big test of Bush’s new strategy. Should the US choose to face him and his forces head on, they risk alienating Iraq’s Shiites, adding fuel to the anti-occupation resistance and thus probably dooming Bush to failure.

Of course, we’ve been trying to bring Sadr’s bully boys out into the open for a couple of years. It makes killing them easier as we proved in Najaf and Fallujah Sadr City. And both al-Sistani (who can’t stand the upstart Sadr) as well as al-Hakim (leader of the SCIRI) would love to have us de-horn al-Sadr if only because it would leave them a clear field for supremacy among the Shias.

All depends on how willing the firebrand cleric is in seeking a truly political solution to Iraq’s domestic troubles. Even al-Sadr himself may be secretly urging the Americans on so that the more radical (and disobedient) members of his army will disappear. If that happens, it is possible that Sadr will back Maliki’s reconciliation plan with the Sunnis. This presumes facts not in evidence – that Sadr truly wants to work within the political framework of the Constitution in order to wield power and influence. But at the same time, Sadr has also proved himself quite the practical thug in the past in that he came off the streets in the first place to participate in the elections. Perhaps Sadr will see the writing on the wall and rather than risk all by fighting the Americans, he will slip into his Iraqi statesman costume and cooperate with Maliki.

But Sadr is only one of the pieces of the puzzle. The other is in Anbar. And here this Arab observer thinks that we’ve finally hit upon the right strategy:

The “surge” also opens, perhaps for the first time, a serious possibility of pouring water on the insurgent fires in Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. The US has achieved relative successes in the province through alliances with Sunni tribes. The hope is that such realistic and pragmatic accommodations will be extended to Iraqis who are fighting under the banner of a nationalist and anti-occupation agenda.

So some of the stars have come into alignment for Bush. But to keep them there in the long term, the Iraqi government will need to amend the constitution in a way that appeases the Sunni community. Reassuring Iraq’s Sunnis that they have a place in the new Iraq will also reassure neighboring Sunni governments, which have mostly turned a blind eye to the support for the insurgency that has come from their lands.

We’re still waiting on Maliki to show some leadership on political issues like reconciliation, oil revenue sharing (which is currently in limbo after Sunnis balked at the deal), amnesty, power sharing, and federalism agreements with the Kurds and Sunnis. Embroiled as he is now in these rape allegations, it remains to be seen if all the good work our people do in tamping down most of the violence will bear fruit at the Iraqi conference table when the factions get together to hammer out accommodations they can all live in peace with.

The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq contains few, if any, surprises regarding the situation on the ground in that bloody country but offers “a glimmer” of hope that things can improve significantly:

A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community yesterday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document.

In a discussion of whether Iraq has reached a state of civil war, the 90-page classified NIE comes to no conclusion and holds out prospects of improvement. But it couches glimmers of optimism in deep uncertainty about whether the Iraqi leaders will be able to transcend sectarian interests and fight against extremists, establish effective national institutions and end rampant corruption.

The document emphasizes that although al-Qaeda activities in Iraq remain a problem, they have been surpassed by Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals. Iran, which the administration has charged with supplying and directing Iraqi extremists, is mentioned but is not a focus.

Reading between the lines of what was leaked to the Washington Post, the NIE nevertheless seems to me to make the correct judgements and draws the right conclusions:

Sources familiar with the closely held estimate agreed to discuss it in general terms yesterday on the condition that they remain anonymous and not be directly quoted. But Negroponte and others in the intelligence community have made frequent references to its conclusions in recent testimony.

On Tuesday, Negroponte referred to the NIE in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Iraq is at a precarious juncture. That means the situation could deteriorate, but there are prospects for increasing stability” that depend on the commitment of Iraqi government and political leaders to take steps to end Sunni-Shiite violence and “the willingness of Iraqi security forces to pursue extremist elements of all kinds,” he said.

Congress, which requested the Iraq NIE last August, has pressured the intelligence community to complete it in time for consideration of Bush’s new strategy. Intelligence officials have insisted that their best experts were working on the project at the same time they were meeting the demands of policymakers for current intelligence reports.

In the end, we can send 10 times 21,000 troops to Iraq. But if the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to avoid tackling the political problems that are fueling the sectarian violence, then all is for naught and we might as well redeploy our troops to Kuwait or some other base now.

I don’t envy the task of the Prime Minister but to date, he has been his own worst enemy. His cozying up to Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army is only one of his problems. The fact is, the Sunnis see Maliki trying to establish Shia hegemony over the rest of the country and indeed, this is what has been happening. The coalition of political parties that governs Iraq are dominated by Shia nationalists who refuse to back Maliki in taking the steps necessary to broaden participation of the Sunnis and Kurds as well as adding the secular parties to the mix. Every plea we have made, every attempt to engage the Shia parties in the kind of nation building that will take the fire from the hearts of both Shias and Sunnis and start the healing process which would begin to reduce the violence has been rebuffed.

The Shias, by their lights, don’t see the need. They point to their victories at the polls and have expressed the fear that if they give up too much power to the Sunnis and Kurds, their own voters will turn on them. Then there is the threat of assassination by one of the dozen or so militias. Sadr has made it clear that Iraq will be a nation dominated by Shias and any politician that advocates sharing power with the Sunnis does so at their own peril.

Meanwhile, the Sunnis are trapped by history and by the blood on their hands from generations of oppressing the Shias and Kurds. The only way out for them is amnesty. And at the moment, amnesty is a non-starter for Maliki who would have to please both the radical Shias represented by Sadr and the Americans who would not look kindly on pardoning insurgents who killed our soldiers.

So the insurgents believe they have no choice. They must fight or die – either at the hands of Shia death squads or in battle against the Americans. Getting the Americans to go away may seem to be the height of stupidity since the American Army is the only thing standing between the Sunnis and a human rights tragedy that could dwarf what is going on in Darfur – a bloodletting and refugee crisis that would involve more than 5 million people. But the insurgents, who have made common cause with al-Qaeda in Iraq in some instances, feel that their only play is to try and reclaim power. And they know the Americans would never allow that to happen.

This Gordian Knot cannot be cut by American troops no matter how spectacularly they perform in the field. It won’t be cut simply by reining in the militias or killing Shia and Sunni extremists, although this would be extremely helpful and give the Iraqi government some breathing room to initiate at least some political reforms. It might not even be possible for the Iraqis to cut it alone. I can understand the resistance by the Administration to a regional conference on Iraq that would include the Iranians and the Syrians. But the Saudis are apparently going to start taking a more active role in defending their Sunni brethren while Iran shows no signs of slacking off in their support for the militias. It would make sense that a regional conference, with a well defined agenda, could come up with solutions that would use the influence of those two nations (and possibly Syria) in helping the Iraqis achieve a consensus on how to move forward toward political stability.

This most recent NIE, if it does nothing else, will, I hope, disabuse those who are inclined to believe that the application of military power alone by America can do much to solve the long term, systemic political problems that keep the insurgency going. At this point, we can do little more than act as a buffer between Shia extremists who seek revenge and Sunnis who are being hunted down and killed by both regular and irregular forces. For this reason alone, our continued presence in Iraq is well worth the effort.

But if the government of Prime Minister Maliki continues on its course and refuses to engage the other factions in a dialogue that would lead to a truly non sectarian government of national unity, we should look very hard at exploring other options up to and including a redeployment of our troops outside of Iraq.

UPDATE

Allah points to this McClatchy dispatch from yesterday that blames the US for the rise in influence of the Mahdi Army. The story quotes American troops on the ground in Baghdad saying that the the Iraqi army is lousy with Sadrists and that their plan is to wait for us to leave and then carry out a nationwide massacre of Sunnis.

Bryan points out in an update that this is not entirely accurate, that Sadr appears to have lost total control over his own militia and that there are several agendas at work among Sadrists.

First of all, there is nothing very new here. Perhaps the idea that roughly half the Iraqi army in Baghdad is made up of Sadrites would be news – if it were true. Maliki has deliberately tried to sprinkle Kurdish units in with the Shias to head off just such an eventuality. The problem is, in the past, the Kurds have been reluctant to go to Baghdad and have gone so far as to mutiny against the idea – probably because they realize all too well the truth in some of what has been reported here. I agree with Bryan that it is the local police who are truly lousy with Sadrites and that the army is trusted to a much greater degree by all Iraqis.

Bryan’s take below sounds about right:

The case of JAM is, as I’ve mentioned before, not as simple as the press usually makes out. Of the entire JAM militia, probably half are truly loyal to al-Sadr. The other half joined up for various reasons from needing the money to being threatened if they don’t join to having a grudge against Sunnis to wanting to tamp down local petty crime, etc. JAM isn’t a monolithic force in the way that Al Qaeda is, all joined by one ideal. There are factions within it, and those factions can be and are being exploited politically by the US forces. That also takes time. I will say that all the panic in Washington these days strengthens the hand of Sadr, since he seems to be on the winning side right now and everyone who chose to side with us seems to be on the losing side. The momentum right now is undoubtedly with the Sadrists, not because of the infiltration, but because anyone who is on the fence in Baghdad is being compelled by events to choose a side, and one side appears to be running away. The rational choice for an awful lot of people will be to join the side that is staying and looks like it will have a great deal of power after we’ve withdrawn. Had we stayed and not shown so much panic over the years, those who sided with us would be in a stronger position in Iraqi society than they may be in the coming months and years–if they survive that long.

None of this is to minimize the threat of militia infiltration into the ISF. But stories like the one above present the negative gotchas–see here, the whole Iraqi military is nothing but JAM–while leaving out the positive things our troops might have said about the ISF or how they see the infiltration being dealt with. The same troops at FOB Justice who were candid with us about JAM infiltration in the ISF also noted that some units are standing up fairly well and some are taking their missions very seriously and doing them well. You’ll hear about that in a bit more detail in tomorrow’s Vent, actually.

Yes, victory. For all the sneering lefties who will come here and try and explain away the news that the freely elected government of Iraq is about ready to ask the United States military to leave once certain conditions are met and a timetable relating to those conditions is agreed upon, this is the very definition of a win for our side (no thanks to you). Our leaving would also be predicated on the acceptance by the insurgents of some kind of amnesty program for those who fought American troops but not for terrorists who deliberately targeted Iraqi civilians.

How is this different than John Kerry or the Democrats asking for a “timetable” based on arbitrary and capricious criteria, specifically neglecting the insurgency factor? For one thing, the proposal comes from the Iraqis themselves not self-serving domestic politicians wishing to score points with our electorate. For another, no Democrat ever proposed anything that would have taken into account a ratcheting down of much of the insurgency. It never entered into any discussion on any of the resolutions offered in the Senate. The timetables would have been based solely on Iraqi capabilities not on a concomitant easing of the security situation by drawing the insurgents into politics.

In short, not only will we leave once the Iraqis can stand up, but also when most of the insurgents lay down.

This is a formula for victory albeit not a complete one. Both the White House and the military have fiercely opposed amnesty in the past and will probably continue to do so. I made the point here that though it would be a bitter pill to swallow, we must expect some kind of amnesty program. For Prime Minister Maliki, who is proceeding more quickly and with more determination than anyone expected, the amnesty program is the cornerstone of his Grand Solution or “National Reconciliation Plan:”

A timetable for withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq. Amnesty for all insurgents who attacked U.S. and Iraqi military targets. Release of all security detainees from U.S. and Iraqi prisons. Compensation for victims of coalition military operations.

Those sound like the demands of some of the insurgents themselves, and in fact they are. But they’re also key clauses of a national reconciliation plan drafted by new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who will unveil it Sunday. The provisions will spark sharp debate in Iraq—but the fiercest opposition is likely to come from Washington, which has opposed any talk of timetables, or of amnesty for insurgents who have attacked American soldiers.

[snip]

The plan also calls for a withdrawal timetable for coalition forces from Iraq, but it doesn’t specify an actual date—one of the Sunnis’ key demands. It calls for “the necessity of agreeing on a timetable under conditions that take into account the formation of Iraqi armed forces so as to guarantee Iraq’s security,” and asks that a U.N. Security Council decree confirm the timetable. Mahmoud Othman, a National Assembly member who is close to President Talabani, said that no one disagrees with the concept of a broad, conditions-based timetable. The problem is specifying a date, which the United States has rejected as playing into the insurgents’ hands. But Othman didn’t rule out that reconciliation negotiations called for in the plan might well lead to setting a date. “That will be a problem between the Iraqi government and the other side [the insurgents], and we will see how it goes. It’s not very clear yet.”

It may surprise you to learn that Iraqi government officials have been in contact with several of the larger insurgent groups for months. Since many of the major Sunni rebel groups are made up of men with tribal and clan loyalties, negotiators have been hard pressed to get a consensus among so many disparate groups. Apparently the ex-Baathists are one of the largest if not the largest insurgent group and are also being difficult although holding out the bait of political participation (making the party legal again) could work in Maliki’s favor.

But what will Washington do? In the end, Bush will have little choice in the matter. When the Iraqis ask us to leave and set the conditions for that to happen, we can hardly say no. Yes, we can push for a more limited amnesty and for more flexibility in the timetable. But resisting a pullout at this point just doesn’t make sense.

The President should schedule either a press conference or an oval office address for Monday or Tuesday at the latest. It’s not like they haven’t been kept fully informed of what has been going on so our response should be immediate. And Bush should take the opportunity to come out and say flatly that this is the path to victory. Not only would it undercut his critics, but he should carefully take the time to explain how this is different than the proposals made by the cut and run Democrats who were so soundly defeated in the Senate last week.

The insurgency is only part of the problem, of course. Al Qaeda in Iraq will not give up no matter what most Sunni groups end up doing. And then there are the lawless gangs of thugs who run large sections of Baghdad and some of the larger cities, making citizens pay them protection and running kidnapping rackets as well as engaging in murder for hire and other crimes of violence. This is a law enforcement problem that can be tackled vigorously once most of the police are freed up from concentrating on stopping insurgent and terrorist attacks.

And Prime Minister Maliki seems to have his priorities straight:

Maliki’s reconciliation plan will undoubtedly be the subject of protracted discussions, and not everyone in the Iraqi government is pleased with it. The document also calls for bringing militias and “death squads” under control—a provision which the powerful Shia party, SCIRI, is not happy with, because it effectively equates militias with the insurgents. Maliki is also Shia but from the Dawa party. And Sunnis, for their part, are reluctant to renounce the insurgency when they are still threatened by Shia militias, and by Shia-dominated police. “The Sunnis have only one card to play, the insurgency,” says the senior coalition official. “They don’t have enough population and they’re not sitting on any of the resources. Therefore their political identity is almost entirely defined by the insurgency.”

Breaking that Shia/Sunni impasse won’t be easy. But as the U.S. ambassador says, “Every war must come to an end,” and few on any side in Iraq any longer believe they can kill their way to peace. The only alternative is to try to talk their way there.

Peace. Victory. And with some hard negotiating along with a little luck vouchsafed by a just and merciful Providence, our boys and girls can come home in triumph.

UPDATE

Josh Marshall has an intelligent view from the left:

Not just the departure of American troops at some distant and unspecified point in the future when everything in Iraq has calmed down and it’s a fun place to live, but having it begin to unfold in the here and now. That accomplishes two things—it begins to lance the boil of foreign occupation and it forces the Iraqis themselves to start taking steps to run and control the country themselves. This would have to take place as part of a political program of national reconciliation as Prime Minister Maliki is proposing.

Am I sure this will work? Not at all. As I’ve written at various points over the last couple years, this is the root irony and tragedy of the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into in Iraq. We are both the glue holding the country together and the solvent tearing it apart.

Marshall draws an erroneous conclusion I believe when he states that Bush won’t take the deal because he is seeking to pass the problem along to a predecessor. I think if Bush is half the politician I think he is, he will jump at this chance to end our involvement in this problematic war. And while there’s no doubt that the Iraqis will request a residual “trip wire” force of perhaps 10 or 20 thousand men remain to prevent foreign adventurism, I think that troop drawdowns starting in late summer or early fall will take the Iraq War off the political menu for the Democrats.

This doesn’t mean they still can’t take over the House. But it may bring home just enough of the President’s base to allow Republicans to squeak their way to victory in November.