Iraq Lesson Still Unlearned: We Won
11/11/09
Strategy: Democracy is finally taking hold in the wake of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. That, not American withdrawal, should be the big story. It's time to acknowledge success and to learn from it.
You wouldn't know it from most news coverage, but the Iraq story continues and — get this — it's a story of emerging victory. What else can you call it when a stable democracy, the ultimate goal in America's military intervention, is in sight?
With last Sunday's passage of a law that paves the way for the first national elections since 2005, the Iraqi people will soon be able to cement their unity and nationhood in a way they never have.
The contrasts with 2005 are telling.
Back then, the elections were blighted by a Sunni Arab boycott. Iraqis voted for parties, not individual candidates, on sectarian and ethnic lines. If anything, the balloting heightened divisions and boosted the insurgency.
This time, voters will choose individuals rather than parties. No serious boycotts are in the works. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has broken with his old Shiite alliance and is leading a national-unity coalition. The touchy issue of who will claim oil-rich Kirkuk was defused in a compromise that satisfied Kurds and Arabs.
These are all signs that the U.S. nation-building effort in Iraq, once widely seen as hopeless, is working. The liberal view of the Iraq War — that of a debacle from which we cannot escape fast enough — can't stand up for long against such good news. That may be why certain news gatekeepers stressed the theme of U.S. withdrawal when they reported the passage of the election law.
The New York Times hailed the action as "a significant milestone for (Iraq's) fragile democracy and a step that will allow the rapid withdrawal of American combat forces early next year."
The Los Angeles Times dispensed with the milestone talk and got right to the point, saying, "Iraq's bickering politicians finally agreed on a new election law Sunday, paving the way for crucial national balloting to take place in January and for the drawdown of U.S. troops to proceed as scheduled."
Translated, what a relief it will be when we don't have to keep 120,000 of our troops in Iraq to baby-sit all those "bickering politicians," as if there's a place on the planet where politicians don't bicker. We grant that the troop drawdown is important, especially to the families of soldiers stationed in Iraq. It also should help speed the deployment of more forces to Afghanistan.
But withdrawal is not the heart of the Iraq story. Treating it as such raises the risk that Americans will ignore the risks of leaving before Iraq is fully able to defend itself against foreign and domestic enemies. The right timetable for withdrawal is one that preserves the gains that were won with so much American blood and treasure. Now is not the time to give up those achievements.
So what is at the heart of the story? Try this: The U.S. mission, for all its false starts and blunders, has succeeded and will be judged a success by historians, as long as we don't throw away the victory now. We'll leave it to others to argue over ranking the presidency of George W. Bush. What's more important is to learn from our success in Iraq and apply the lessons.
In Afghanistan, the Iraqi experience should offer reason for hope. It wasn't so long ago that Iraq looked every bit as unpromising politically as Afghanistan does now, with a stumbling central government, deep sectarian divisions and a raging insurgency.
Pessimists such as Joe Biden, who proposed partitioning Iraq, were proved wrong. Biden, who as vice president is reported to be urging a pullback in Afghanistan, could be proved wrong again.
The two nations are different in many ways, but the basic principle behind the strategy that worked in Iraq — to create havens for civilians and to use divide-and-conquer tactics against the insurgency — deserves a fair test.
An even more basic lesson from Iraq is that security comes first. It's hard to make any political progress when people are ruled by fear. All this suggests that Americans face a choice: If we want success in Afghanistan, we need to be ready for a sustained and costly military commitment.
Otherwise, they can embrace failure as so many were quick to do — and maybe still do, contrary to the evidence — in Iraq.
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.
