Axis Of Emanuel

This latest "strategy" on Iraq being floated by the Emanuel-Hoyer wing of the party is absolutely flabbergasting. They're trying to take the (correct) argument that the only progress meaningful in Iraq is political progress, and then twist it into an unworkable plan to tie political progress to war funding.

Now, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) is examining a new approach, releasing war funds in small increments, with further installments tied to specific performance measures for Iraq's politicians. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) also is searching for a new approach and has been briefed on the idea of more explicitly tying funds to political progress.

The new thrust has divided Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, some of whom say they will never approve additional funding for the Iraq war without troop-withdrawal timelines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) remains skeptical, House Democratic leadership sources said, and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has vacillated between seeking compromise with Republicans and holding firmly to troop-withdrawal language.

"We've been through all that," Reid said yesterday of the new approach, suggesting the war-funding issue will wait until January. "I just think we need to figure out some way to fund a government and move on to next year."

OK, I know hacks like Emanuel rely on the ignorance of the public, but does he really expect us to be THAT ignorant?

In the spring, when the Democrats finally capitulated and provided war funding to the President, they held out the consolation that the Administration would be forced to show benchmarks of political progress in Iraq. The progress was nonexistent, and that was reflected in the benchmarks. The response to this from the Emanuel wing is, "OK, this time we're REALLY going to tie funding to political benchmarks!" And when they fail, they'll send out funding but they'll really, REALLY have to be tied to political benchmarks. As long as these guys are still buying the false argument that funding the war is the same as supporting the troops, they're NEVER going to cut off funding for any reason. And so what the benchmarks say is completely immaterial, and it's immaterial whether or not they're met.

It's important to note that this awful strategy is spearheaded by (drum roll please) Michael O'Hanlon, who has a stake in getting Democrats to admit that there's great progress in Iraq because he's implicated in the decision to go to war in the first place. Emanuel is taking Iraq policy from someone who's only goal is to vindicate himself.

How about some straight talk, to coin a phrase? The troop surge is insufficient for saving Iraq, and may be working against the best interests of the country. The relative "security" in the country obscures the fact that it's still one of the worst civilian crises in the world, still capable of horrific violence like we saw yesterday, with four bombs killing 23. In cities where the additional forces cannot be deployed, there remains desolation and rubble, as citizens of Iraq wait nervously to see how this will play out. The tactics used most to tamp down violence, like curfews and bans on driving and blast walls and air bombings, are unsustainable in the long term. So are the troop numbers. Meanwhile, the ethnic separations are as much to account for the reductions in violence as anything, resulting in horrors like the elimination of the Iraqi Christian community. This is a fragile calm that isn't even all that calm, and is very subject to change.

Officials attribute the relative calm to a huge increase in the number of Sunni Arab rebels who have turned their guns on jihadists instead of American troops; a six-month halt to military action by the militia of a top Shiite leader, Moktada al-Sadr; and the increased number of American troops on the streets here.

They stress that all of these changes can be reversed, and on relatively short notice. The Americans have already started to reduce troop levels and Mr. Sadr, who has only three months to go on his pledge, has issued increasingly bellicose pronouncements recently.

The Sunni insurgents who turned against the jihadists are now expecting to be rewarded with government jobs. Yet, so far, barely 5 percent of the 77,000 Sunni volunteers have been given jobs in the Iraqi security forces, and the bureaucratic wheels have moved excruciatingly slowly despite government pledges to bring more Sunnis in.

“We are in a holding pattern,” said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization. “The military solution has gained enough peace to last through the U.S. election, but we have a situation that is extremely fragile. None of the violent actors have either been defeated or prevailed, and the political roots of the conflict have not been addressed, much less resolved.”

Indeed, there are reports that insurgent groups may be reforming, waiting out a surge that they know will end (isn't that EXACTLY what George Bush said would happen, that if we set a timeline the insurgents would "wait us out"? If that was so, why would he authorize a surge he KNEW would have to end shortly, giving insurgents the opportunity to do just that?)

We know, then, that the security situation can only be sustained through a political solution. And on the political front, periodic Parliamentary boycotts and rampant corruption have brought efforts to a standstill, and there is no emphasis from the Administration to encourage reconciliation. There has been talk of the Iraqi government hiring civilian volunteers to police neighborhoods, but without any action to this point. Meanwhile the Turkish army has actually sent ground forces into Kurdistan over the last week, firing on rebel PKK terrorists and threatening a breakdown of stability in one of the few stable areas.

This is a chaotic environment. Yet the Emanuel wing wants to, in essence, take Iraq off the table by offering what amounts to no-strings-attached money far into the future for a continued occupation. They refuse to really tie funding to progress, and so we get these fig leaves. And the result is that the Administration doesn't take demands from the Congress seriously, and they refuse to do the hard diplomatic work of forging a political solution, which is the only hope for the holding pattern we now see not to morph into an explosion of violence. What's more, continued funding of the occupation makes the Iraqis dependent on the United States for their security, actually decreasing the hopes for political progress. What we have right now in Iraq are armed camps, many of them armed by the Americans, and the axis of Emanuel seek to arm and train them even more to eventually fight one another.