Informed Speculation

Can there be any doubt that our efforts in Iraq are bearing fruit? Even the Sunni elements of the insurgency are beginning to embrace democracy:

Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday’s polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.

“We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote,” said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam’s Baath party.

“Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters.”

The shift is encouraging for Washington, which hopes to draw Sunni Arabs into peaceful politics in order to defuse the insurgency.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger senses, in the haste for withdrawal, the seeds of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory:

The administration and its critics seem to agree that the beginning of American withdrawal will mark a turning point. Unresolved are the speed and extent of the drawdown and whether it should be driven by a fixed timetable or by a strategy seeking to shape events.

Though often put into technical terms, the issue is not the mechanics of withdrawal. Rather the debate should be over consequences – whether, in the end, withdrawal will be perceived as a forced retreat or as an aspect of a prudent and carefully planned move on behalf of international security.

Whatever one’s view of the decision to undertake the Iraq war, the method by which it was entered, or the strategy by which it was conducted – and I supported the original decision – one must be clear about the consequences of failure. If, when we go, we leave nothing behind but a failed state and chaos, the consequences will be disastrous for the region and for America’s position in the world.

For the jihad phenomenon is more than the sum of individual terrorist acts extending from Bali through Jakarta, to New Delhi, Tunisia, Riyadh, Istanbul, Casablanca, Madrid and London. It is an ideological outpouring comparable to the early days of Islam by which Islam’s radical wing seeks to sweep away secularism, pluralistic values and Western institutions wherever Muslims live.

Its dynamism is fueled by the conviction that the designated victims are on the decline and lacking the will to resist. Any event that seems to confirm these convictions compounds the revolutionary dynamism. If a fundamentalist regime is installed in Baghdad or in any of the other major cities, such as Mosul or Basra, if terrorists secure substantial territory for training and sanctuaries, or if chaos and civil war mark the end of the American intervention, jihadists would gain momentum wherever there are significant Islamic populations or nonfundamentalist Islamic governments. No country within reach of jihad would be spared the consequences of the resulting upheavals sparked by the many individual centers of fanaticism that make up the jihad.

Defeat would shrivel American credibility around the world. Our leadership and the respect accorded to our views on other regional issues from Palestine to Iran would be weakened; the confidence of other major countries – China, Russia, Europe, Japan – in America’s potential contribution would be diminished. The respite from military efforts would be brief before even vaster crises descend on us. Critics must face the fact that a disastrous outcome is defined by the global consequences, not domestic rhetoric. Similarly, the administration will ultimately be judged by results, not plans.

President Bush has put forward a plausible strategy. It acknowledges that mistakes have been made and affirms that policy has been leavened by experience. But the crescendo of demands for a fixed timetable suppresses the quality of patience that history teaches is the prerequisite for overcoming guerrilla warfare. Even an appropriate strategy can be vitiated by being executed in a too precipitate manner.

We will withdraw troops from Iraq; that has never been the question. The question is whether events in Iraq – or events in America – set the timetable. To allow domestic political concerns to override conditions in Iraq would be folly, and a betrayal of the 2,000+ Americans who have given their lives in this struggle.

Now is the time for strength – we can see the path to victory if we are strong enough to follow it…