And in Iraq...

Informed Comment:

Starving the Americans Out

Someone in the Green Zone leaked the following memo, which shows that US personnel are now actually facing difficulties in getting food by convoy up from Kuwait. They avoid local food in the Baghdad region because of the danger guerrillas will poison it.

New Iraq Plan on the Ground

WaPo was leaked to on the subject of the new Crocker-Petraeus plan for Iraq. Key elements:

1. Back Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rather than trying to organize a new government.

2. Expand and build up the Iraqi Army, which is less purely sectarian than some other security forces in Iraq.

3. And then implementation of 3 points:

a. Protect the local population from the insurgents so as to allow them to become independent actors in civil society.

b. Increase capacity and efficiency of government ministries and their integraton with provincial administrations.

c. Purge Iraq's government and security forces of "sectarian abusers," replacing them with "Iraqi nationalists."

Crocker and Petraeus are among the more capable US leaders ever to be involved in the Iraq misadventure, and they have excellent instincts about what needs to be done. Better, they have experience and information, and know how to analyze it.

But I think we have to be realistic about the possibilities here. The US is getting out of Iraq, if not in 2008, then surely in the period after the inauguration of the next president; and if not altogether, then very largely. As one officer quoted in the WaPo piece noted, there is going to be a "giant sucking sound" when the withdrawal occurs.
So by 2009 it is desirable that there be a functioning civil government and a much strengthened Iraqi army. (An unlikely outcome, admittedly, but people making practical policy in Baghdad have to at least try.) In essence, I don't see the Crocker-Petraeus plan as necessarily a bid to stay militarily in Iraq but as possibly a way of transitioning out of the occupation and toward an Iraq that can stand on its own two feet.

As a set of ideals, I don't find anything to criticize in the plan as presented. I can think of a lot of practical obstacles to its success.

...