At the Iraq war's end, a shrug of uncertainty

By David Ignatius
Thursday, September 2, 2010

BAGHDAD

The images for ending America's war in Iraq were appropriately tentative rather than triumphal: The president spoke in Washington of turning a page; the vice president talked here of starting a new chapter; the defense secretary said it was too early even to judge whether the war was worth it.

But the politicians and generals who gathered here Wednesday for a transition ceremony agreed on the fact that matters most to the Iraqi and American people, which is that the U.S. combat phase of the war is indeed over -- after more than seven years of fighting, a trillion dollars and more than 4,000 American combat deaths. An invasion that began in 2003 with a false rationale ended with a shrug of uncertainty.

The guarded language used to mark the end of combat was appropriate, for Iraq is in many ways an unfinished war. Its ultimate success or failure won't be clear for some years, when we can see whether Iraq has sustained its new democracy or plunged back into sectarian strife and political chaos.

Defense Secretary Bob Gates offered a conditional response when he was asked whether the war justified its cost: "I think that it really requires a historian's perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run."

Vice President Biden, too, eschewed upbeat political rhetoric when he said at the ceremony in one of Saddam Hussein's marble palaces that the Iraq war had been "as complicated as any in our history." He quoted the military strategist Karl von Clausewitz by saying "war is the realm of uncertainty," suggesting that this precept applies, sometimes, even to outcomes.

Iraqis who fear (or in some cases, hope) that the Americans will secretly continue in combat, rather than in the limited role of "advise and assist," haven't gotten the message. An American general summed it up this way: "If you're on your third tour here and you've got to flush out a bad guy, you're going to tell your Iraqi counterpart, 'You go down into that hole, you first.' "

Gates, asked what he would tell an Iraqi who complained that America had knocked down the old order and was leaving without creating a stable, new one, answered: "I think at this point it's the Iraqis' responsibility."

Talking with Iraqis in recent days, I've heard foreboding about what lies ahead as U.S. military power declines. "Frankly speaking, we are not moving ahead," said former prime minister Ayad Allawi, whose party won the largest number of seats in the March parliamentary election but so far has been unable to form a government.

"There is going to be a vacuum in the country," Allawi said in a telephone interview. "I don't think the U.S. should dictate things, but they should continue to be engaged." American officials keep insisting that "engagement" is indeed the new watchword, but their involvement in recent months, led by Biden, has been episodic and mostly unsuccessful.

One of the mysteries of U.S. policy is why Washington keeps pushing a formula that will allow Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep his job (or another top post) at a time when he is rejected by nearly all Iraqi political parties. America's silent ally in this peculiar gambit is Iran. After so much pain, Iraq deserves better.

America has spent so much blood and treasure in Iraq that it would be wrong to walk away completely, however attractive that may seem politically. I was forcefully reminded of the reasons to stay involved by Kassim Daoud, a respected Shiite politician from Nasiriyah who served as national security minister and has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He recalled this week that the Iraqi people have paid a dear price for democracy -- in the carnage that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and in the courageous turnout for Iraq's first election in 2005 and subsequent balloting.

"The Iraqi people gave everything for the democratic system, but so far, they have not tasted the fruits," Daoud said.

One Iraqi told me a story to ponder if you find yourself wondering whether we accomplished anything at all in this cruel war. The leader of a big Iraqi Shiite party was summoned last month to Tehran and instructed to throw his support behind Maliki. The Iraqi refused, at considerable risk to himself and his party. The reason, said my informant, was that this Shiite leader wanted a strong Iraqi government and a competent leader -- without dictation from America, Iran or anyone else. That's an Iraq worth caring about.

A speech's tall order

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, September 2, 2010

By insisting Tuesday evening that "it's time to turn the page," President Obama was talking about more than the Iraq war, and doing much more than reviving one of his most effective slogans from the 2008 campaign.

He was also trying to turn the page on a period in which he has found himself on the defensive, his party in a perilous position for November's elections and his reputation for political mastery in doubt.

Obama's Oval Office speech was resolutely nonpolitical in form but profoundly political in its implications. To rescue his party, Obama had to begin rebuilding his popularity, offer hope in a time of economic despair and restore confidence in the course on which he has set the nation.

It was an almost impossibly difficult combination of goals, and he tried to achieve them in just 18 minutes. He spoke about war and foreign policy to a country exhausted by combat abroad and focused intensely on economic problems at home. Obama had to present himself as a commander in chief, not as the leader of the Democratic Party, yet the speech could be heard only in the context of an election that is just two months away.

The result was a series of balancing acts that, while a bit ungainly, held the promise of lifting Obama's standing with middle-of-the-road voters who may have begun to lose faith.

His treatment of former president George W. Bush was emblematic. His words were exceptionally gracious. While noting that he and his predecessor "disagreed about the war from its outset," Obama added that "no one can doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security."

For those who see the Iraq war as a catastrophic mistake -- and their ranks include many of Obama's earliest supporters -- this was more praise than Bush deserved given the magnitude of the error he made. Meanwhile, some of the war's staunchest backers immediately assailed Obama for not crediting the positive effects of Bush's troop surge.

Less partisan voters, however, may simply have seen an Obama behaving like a president, being as generous as he had to be, acknowledging the valor of our troops but refusing to concede that a war so many of them wish we hadn't fought was a good idea.

In fact, the central players in Obama's story were not politicians at all but the men and women of "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known."

By constantly returning to their sacrifices, Obama sought to reassure those who fought and the families of those who died that their exertions and losses had accomplished great things for the nation, even in a war that the current commander in chief regards as mistaken. Here, too, he spoke for many conflicted Americans who now doubt the wisdom of the war and yet still hope it might yield something other than bitter fruit.

And then, well more than halfway through, Obama offered what Democrats had been waiting for: a turn homeward and a brutal accounting of the costs of the conflict.

"We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas," Obama declared. "This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform."

Members of the president's party, struggling for political traction, were quick to highlight his call to face our "challenges at home." Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who has the unenviable task of leading the Democrats' effort to hold the House of Representatives, said in an interview shortly after Obama concluded: "The overall theme of the speech was that it's time to turn to nation-building at home rather than nation-building abroad."

For Van Hollen and other Democrats, the real test of whether Obama succeeded will not be the reception of this single address but whether it becomes the prelude to an invigorated presidency that uses the end of combat operations in Iraq to rekindle the aspirations for change that won him power in the first place.

As a successful author, Obama knows that turning a page is not the same as writing the next chapter. Now, he must produce a narrative compelling enough to alter a story line that, on its current trajectory, does not end well for him.

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