The Iraq war has been called “unnecessary, mismanaged and now unwinnable.”
According to the lead editorial in the New York Times on Sunday, what the country urgently needs is for President George Bush to chart a way out of Iraq that also limits the chaos that will be left behind. But his “disconnect” goes far to explain the harshly critical reaction of Congress and the public to his plan to further bleed America’s overstretched forces by sending some 20,000 additional troops in an attempt to impose peace on Baghdad’s vengeful streets. He proposes to do that without any enforceable commitments from the Iraqi government that it will take the necessary political steps that are the only hope for tamping down a spiralling civil war. Of all the options available, the president, the newspaper said, has come out with the worst as he would mortgage thousands more American lives and what remains of Washington’s credibility in the region to a destructively sectarian Shiite government that he seems unwilling or unable to influence or restrain.
The editorial notes that Nouri al-Maliki gave the latest White House plan an even chillier reception than it received in the United States Congress. He apparently would have preferred to see American forces sent to fight Sunni insurgents in western Anbar province, leaving Baghdad as a free-fire zone for his Shiite militia partners. However, the US cannot simply wash its hands of Iraq, which is in imminent danger of violently breaking apart, driving millions of refugees across its borders and potentially unleashing a chain reaction of regional conflicts that could draw in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and perhaps others as well. Iran has already become more formidable and dangerous, with a friendly Shiite fundamentalist government in Baghdad. If the United States is to recoup any of its standing and influence there, it will have to find a way to contain the chaos in Iraq. And it will have to do a lot more to address other concerns of these governments and their people, starting with a genuine and sustained effort to mediate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. |