Inappropriate Content: Kakistocracy©

Just in case yesterday's posts weren't enough, let's talk some more Iraq, m'kay?

The head of the committee drafting Iraq's constitution, Humam Hammoudi (at right doing his Ayatollah impression, which kills at parties) is skeptical that the Sunni negotiators can be brought on board with the constitution as written. Hammoudi pointed out that the Sunni negotiators are not elected, "therefore, who can say that they represent the people on the street?" He suggested that if the Sunni negotiators don't agree to the constitution, it can be brought before the Shiite and Kurd dominated parliament.

That insurgency? Last throes, I swear. Over at the Powerline, John remains "pretty confident that the outcome of the current bargaining will be positive."

Ultimately the question is, is Iraq really a country? Before the war started, this was my biggest worry: that "Iraq" might be just a fiction that would fall apart as soon as the Saddamite tyranny was destroyed. But that seems not to be the case. All of the parties appear to be united on the main point: there really is a country called Iraq, and they really are debating its future.

Um. If we leave aside the fact that federalism is an unresolved issue, and if we leave aside all the other issues, like the Islamic nation/Arab nation debate or the rights of women, that also content for the "main point" distinction—well, if we leave all that aside, all we're left with is a really bad pun about what happens when you translate "Saddamite" into Arabic.

Over at the Arsenal, Suzanne Nossel continues her discussion with Kevin Drum, most of which I cannibalized yesterday, so why stop now?

There are at least 2 scenarios in terms of what's behind the insurgency, and I have been unable to uncover definitively which is correct. One maintains that the U.S.'s presence in Iraq is the prime motivator behind the insurgency - if we leave, it goes away. The other suggests that while the U.S. presence is part of the picture, the insurgency is mainly a domestic political power struggle.

Whichever it is, I don't see the insurgent fervor being dampened by an announcement of plans for a December 2007 withdrawal. If indeed the insurgents are compelled mostly by a drive to push us out, a statement that we definitively plan to leave some 27 months hence stands a good chance of only emboldening efforts to get us out sooner by raising the human cost of staying. Our terrorist enemies would love the feather in their cap of sending us running ahead of an orderly deadline. If there motives are mainly political, knowing that we aren't going to stand in their way for long may encourage them to "wait us out."

I'd like to respond to Susan's theory about there being two possible scenarios in terms of what's behind the insurgency. It's a mistake to regard the insurgency as motivationally monolithic and make it a puzzle for us to find the right motivation. Clearly the various fighters that make up the insurgency, who run the gamut from the radical Sunni nut-bars to Al Qaeda foreign nationals, and the various groups who support them, from the Iraqi wannabe warlords to the Iranians to who-the-hell-knows—North Korea? Cat Stevens? The Breen?—are motivated by a mix of both the factors Suzanne mentions. If we were to announce a phased withdrawal, the reaction of the insurgency would likely be just as mixed.

That might not be altogether a bad thing. It's likely that the various groups I've mentioned above would split, into a "wait 'em out" crowd and a "last push" crowd. It would of course be of military value to destabilize the insurgence, even if the groups that keep fighting fight harder. More importantly, the Sunnis who sit back and wait for the Americans to leave would be a possible place for the Iraqi government to do business. On the other hand, as Suzanne puts it,

All this is not to say that we should not plan for withdrawal. And this Administration has proffered nothing that comes close to a strategy for achieving our goals under current circumstances. Absent such a strategy, withdrawal is preferable to continued loss of life.

That's not a very optimistic argument, but it's one that's starting to gain some traction. Yesterday in Salt Lake City, over 2,500 people showed up to protest the visit of President Bush, at the urging of the city's mayor. (The President can be seen at right shaking hands with Utah Governor John Huntsman, Jr., and First Lady Ellen Tigh.) Salt Lake Tribune columnist Holly Mullen holds forth:

The most thoughtful people at this gathering - and they voiced this to me repeatedly - know that demanding an immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq would spell disaster in the region. No matter what grand plans the Bush team has for a blossoming democracy in Iraq, the Shiite majority and Sunni minority aren't even close to embracing a constitution.

Pull out U.S. forces now, and we virtually ensure a Shiite Muslim stronghold of Iran and Iraq - a cleric-powered juggernaut that could take aim at the Sunnis and make Saddam's beastly human rights record look golden by comparison.

So here we sit, deep inside a conflict built on a series of Bush blunders.

In essence, this question that Suzanne, Mullen, Drum, and the rest of America keep bumping our heads against asks us how we can do the least harm. It was clearly a mistake to go over there, and no we need to decide if the least damage is done by staying for as long as necessary, or by a measured, step-by-step retreat. It's a difficult, complicated question. (It's not a question the President entertains. Speaking with reporters from a ranch in Idaho this morning, Bush implied that all the anti-war protesters want an immediate withdrawal, and that the only alternative to that is to "be optimistic.")

The one argument that might convince me we should leave was made by the aforementioned mayor of Salt Lake, Rocky Anderson, seen at left meeting with a pro-war protestor who is calling for his impeachment. (There's a badly-lit, but somewhat more interesting picture of him here.) Mullen asked Mayor Anderson what he thought we should do in Iraq. After granting out that "a sudden pullout from Iraq would be disastrous," he pointed out why we can't stay:

"We are setting the Muslim world afire by having no plan to end the war."