Informed Speculation

Investor’s Business Daily manages to deftly praise the movement towards a long-awaited unity government while deriding those who would use the progress to move the same agenda that motivated their condemnation of the setbacks: a view of our goal in Iraq as the removal of U.S. troops, and not victory:

Can Americans handle good news from Baghdad? We may soon see, as Iraqi politicians finally move toward forming a new government.

The major good news from the past week was the decision by Ibrahim Jaafari to step aside and let his fellow Shiites name someone less divisive as their choice for prime minister. At this writing, his aide Jawad al-Maliki was in line for the post. Sunni Arab and Kurd leaders seemed willing to accept al-Maliki in the interest of unity.

So why are we concerned that the public and politicians back in the States may take such hopeful signs the wrong way?

The answer is that success may work, just as failure does, to feed impatience rather than hope. No matter what happens now in Iraq, it seems to be reported and analyzed here in the context of one overriding goal: Getting out.

By now, for instance, it is routine for wire-service stories to sum up U.S. policy as driven primarily by the urge to depart as soon as possible. As Reuters phrased it on Friday: “The United States is banking on a national unity government to stabilize the country and enable it to start bringing home its more than 130,000 troops.”

Strictly speaking, it’s true that even the Bush administration would like to see most U.S. troops out of Iraq in due time. But it sees departure as the reward for clear-cut success, not as an end in itself.

Many others seem to have the priorities reversed. They see that the American public is tired of the war and look for any excuse to bring the troops home fast. A setback will do. But so will a sign of progress, which provides a pretext for declaring victory and coming home.

Sen. John Kerry managed to cover both those bases earlier this month (before Jaafari broke the leadership deadlock by stepping aside). If Iraq failed to create a unity government by May 15, he said, U.S. troops should withdraw immediately. But if the Iraqis meet the deadline, he urged a troop withdrawal by the end of the year — which is about as long as an “immediate” withdrawal would take if done in an orderly way.

In other words, we should leave no matter what.

William F. Buckley and John Kerry may see Iraq as a failure, but I do not. I was too sanguine in declaring victory last year, as were a lot of Bush administration supporters. I don’t deny it, and I’m disappointed that things went considerably further downhill than I thought they would.

Victory, however, is not out of the question, and the outline of a real political solution can at least be surmised, even if its ultimate success cannot be taken as a given. Make no mistake, the convening of the parliament and the putting forward of new leadership is an event that may be seen in hindsight as the beginning of the end – but the end I have in mind is a victorious withdrawal, not withdrawal for domestic political reasons.

I tire of the venom thrown Bush’s way by those who have lost sight of brutality of the Hussein regime, and who seem to have forgotten, if they ever knew, the insurmountable obstacle the Baathist regime placed in the way of Mideast reform. For once, I prefer a noble failure, if it comes to that, to hopeful inaction…but victory will be the noblest of all, and the positive omens are beginning to catch up to, if not yet surpass, the negatives…