Unlike the 20 questions from Cordesman (pdf), Fouad Ajami is in case anyone is foolish enough to get too pessimistic:
Ajami: That's a hard one, because in fact, as the prime minister of Iraq himself said at one point something really, I think, very descriptive and very telling. He said Iraqis are not living in the same time period in some way. For the Kurds, it's a time of taking. For the Shia Arabs it's a time of restitution, for the things they were due. For the Sunni Arabs it's a sense of loss and a time of loss.
But by and large we should not really exaggerate the impasse between the Sunnis and Shiites. Sunnis are part of the government. Sunnis are part of the political game. And money from the central government is going to these Sunni provinces. And the Sunnis are beginning to understand that al Qaeda and the insurgency and the armed--and the carrying of guns has really brought them no gains.
But by and large we should not really exaggerate the impasse between the Sunnis and Shiites. Sunnis are part of the government. Sunnis are part of the political game. And money from the central government is going to these Sunni provinces. And the Sunnis are beginning to understand that al Qaeda and the insurgency and the armed--and the carrying of guns has really brought them no gains.
Ajami: They are coming around. They are beginning to understand. For example, during that bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra in February of 2006, the Sunni clerics refused to condemn the bombing and insisted that it was an Iranian plot. Now they understand that they have carried violence too far and they have begun to step back from the brink. I talk to many Sunni clerics who understand that religion has been sullied there and has become an instrument for violence.
Ajami: I am not only pro American but I also have this odd, if you will, background. I am also a Shia. And in fact, when you go to Iraq, people are very, very pro-American. A university went up recently in Kurdistan, in Sulaymaniyah. I am on the board of trustees of this university. It's an American university with an American curriculum, and guess what the selling point is? The word American University of Iraq in Sulaymaniyah.
Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, was asked, he said, What's the secret of the success in Kurdistan? He was asked by people in Anbar. And his answer was alliance with the United States. America is immensely popular in Iraq.
A man we bumped into on the streets of Baghdad looking at his car--dirty, dusty, old--he said, "Perhaps the Americans can get me a new car, because they can do everything.
Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, was asked, he said, What's the secret of the success in Kurdistan? He was asked by people in Anbar. And his answer was alliance with the United States. America is immensely popular in Iraq.
A man we bumped into on the streets of Baghdad looking at his car--dirty, dusty, old--he said, "Perhaps the Americans can get me a new car, because they can do everything.
Here is Ajami in 2003, however. You decide if his glasses are colored.
CNN's Michael Ware has the opinion that there are those in al-Malki's government just waiting to finish the job, so to speak.
