AS has a reader who is into it.
My tealeaves tell me that Petreaus is a combination of ambition (politics) and soldiering.
When he said, "We can do this thing" (or something like it), I believed that to be an honest soldiering assessment, at the time. I think he extrapolated his earlier success. Afterall, Iraq is not such a big place. Baghdad is the only really large city, outside Basra and Kurdistan, which are not 'in play' in quite the same way. The other cities, of 200,000 or less? A city that size can be controlled (as the sheiks know) - you can know all the people, you can reasonably expect to be able to manage human activity, etc.
The medium-term, hard-fast role of the US in an uncertainly developing environment, perhaps, is to provide a guarantee of the sanctity of the ballot box.
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. One could even suggest that al-Malki's adventure to the South was a populist move, right?
So, his goal is to play-for-time, the chief quantity he doesn't have, and to get credible others to help him (Cordesman, O'Hanlon). This is a far bit different than Newt, for instance, who is still after "an American Victory"....
. One could even suggest that al-Malki's adventure to the South was a populist move, right?
One of the self-made problems is that the "middle" in Iraq has been erased through flight and direct attack. "The Mosque" has been disproportionately empowered during the stabilization. Extremists continue to be able to thwart the General Will. Corruption is a way of life. The natural majority, the Shia, are not the civil experts; yet, there is a legacy of the government playing a critical role in social security and status (including State-owned industry), so the rails of society are turned upside down. I haven't seen much evidence that the labor unions are playing a critical role, perhaps because of the weakness of the economy. The population are inured to and traumatized by the myth of the Arab Strongman to some unknown degree (Ba'athism had a horribly repressive element, even outside Saddam's totalitarianism). Last, there is a strong dose of the very old-fashioned rejectionism that threatens at every step any "external" effort to apply the appropriate patches and medicine as well as Iranian-style revolutionary refusal.
How does it end? Who knows. As I remarked at the outset of the plus-up, people are always underestimating the ability of situations to change for the positive or the negative. However, did you notice how much Petreaus perked up when Obama asked his questions? I had the sense that he was thinking, "Finally, a guy who has his pulse on a meaningful conceptual question...".
The medium-term, hard-fast role of the US in an uncertainly developing environment, perhaps, is to provide a guarantee of the sanctity of the ballot box. Just because the Shia are in power, doesn't mean that people won't vote against them if they do not provide basic services or are seen to be too self-interested. One could even suggest that al-Malki's adventure to the South was a populist move, right?
