Political Reconciliation
In the horror of Mumbai, a very important moment was overlooked - the Iraqi Parliament passed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated with the United States. We have concerns about the document, but as coalition politics, it was extraordinary. It may also be the world's best hope for convincing millions of people that consensual government beats violent Islamic radicalism as a form of government.
Skeptics say planning for the American departure is the only thing that actually unites Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions; they don't want us there. News flash - we don't want to be there. We'll vote for getting out as fast as they will vote for throwing us out.
Two-and-a-half years ago, when the Iraqi parliament took office, we wrote:
"Under fire" is probably the worst condition under which to begin practicing consensual politics, but the new government very quickly has to convince the people that the government is the source of their protection and the address for the redress of legitimate grievances. Citizens have to be convinced to end their support for militias and terrorists by a combination of government strength in counter-terror, equality in application of the law, and the uncorrupt provision of security and services in the middle of a war.
It is a tall order. Can it fail? You bet. Will it fail? Hedge.
Thus far, punditry has considered it axiomatic that nothing political could go right in Iraq... Punditry was wrong because it underestimated two things: the bravery of the Iraqi people and the willingness of stubborn American leadership and spectacular American soldiers to provide time and space for Iraqi political development. The first is self-protective and must persist. The second is based on the understanding that Iraq is a front in the larger war against terrorists and the states that harbor and support them, but the physical manifestation of that understanding cannot remain in Iraq forever.
We and the Iraqi government have come a long way in that time. The "self-protective" part has kicked in for them. Beneath the nationalist bravado-verging-on-anti-Americanism is the recognition that whatever they have is tenuous and the only one everyone can turn is to us - and they do. The American presence at once allows them a place to focus their irritation over their unsettled status and keeps the irritation from degenerating into open warfare again. They, and we, agree that we are necessary.
On the American side, the conversation is about the same - if you took a vote in the incoming and outgoing administrations and in Congress, no one wants to be in Iraq. No one has ever wanted to be in Iraq, but fortunately for the future of the Iraqi people, the outgoing administration (with glaring and ugly Democratic exceptions in Congress) stayed through the worst and proved that Americans don't quit in the middle and don't (always) cut out on their allies. The incoming administration has been very circumspect about the circumstances under which we will now leave, how we will do it and what we plan to leave behind.
We are closer to the time when the "physical manifestation of our understanding" - our soldiers, our children - will be able to come home.
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