There’s no military solution in Iraq

The most important testimony to Congress on Iraq was not provided this week by Gen. David Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

It came several weeks ago in a blunt statement by the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Michael Mullen.

He told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, unless Iraqis use the “breathing space” created by the surge to pursue national reconciliation, “no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference.” Mullen also warned that (as Petraeus and Crocker acknowledged) “there is no purely military solution in Iraq.”

Mullen stated this central fact more directly than could Petraeus or Crocker. The military knows that tactical military gains in Anbar province and elsewhere can’t be consolidated ... unless Iraqis stop killing each other.

Questioned at the hearings about political progress, the general and ambassador focused more on hope than on substance. I am sympathetic. The only chance for real political progress in Iraq lies beyond their pay grade; it requires a shift of strategy in the White House.

Gen. Petraeus acknowledges political progress at the national level in Iraq hasn’t worked out as he hoped. The surge theorists argued that better security would make Iraqi sects less fearful about compromising over power and resources. As Crocker put it to the Senate Foreign Relations committee: “When security improves, political life starts up again.”

Ethnic cleansing

But sectarian killing and ethnic cleansing continue in Baghdad and elsewhere — even if levels are lower. The United Nations says Iraqis are fleeing their homes in ever greater numbers. There is scant sign of reconciliation.

Without national reconciliation, the country will continue to splinter. Iraqi security services will be split by sectarian loyalties. As Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey put it last week: without reconciliation, the surge will have only “a temporary tactical effect.”

At the hearings, Petraeus and Crocker put forward a new theory of bottom-up reconciliation. Crocker talked of “progress ... in revenues.” He meant the Shiite-led central government is finally budgeting funds for services and salaries in Sunni provinces and neighborhoods. I know from conversations with Iraqis that this is happening only after heavy pressure from U.S. officials.

Indeed, Baghdad’s central government is “dysfunctional” as Crocker said on Tuesday. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s secretive party, the Dawa, distrusts even his Shiite allies. Shiite parties still distrust Sunni intentions, while Sunni groups fear their dispossession by Shiite militias allied with Iran.

No wonder the general and the ambassador are focused on the provinces. They are encouraging tribal sheikhs in Sunni Anbar province to set up their own police forces to fight al-Qaeda and create jobs; salaries are being paid by Baghdad. American officials are pumping in aid funds. U.S. officials are trying to create similar programs in troubled Shiite provinces in the south.

Yet no one is certain whether these tactics will knit Iraq together, or speed its disintegration. Some argue this is the prelude to soft partition — a division of Iraq into three sectarian regions, with a divided Baghdad that would look like Belfast in the bad old days.

Regional danger

That may be where things wind up, but the result would be far from stable. Sunnis and most Shiites oppose a formal break-up, as do most of Iraq’s neighbors. A failed state with a collapsed center would endanger the region. It’s not where the general and ambassador want to go.

Which brings me to the reason these two are so dependent on the White House. The best chance to hold Iraq together rests with George W. Bush.

As Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel urged at Senate Foreign Relations hearings for Petraeus and Crocker: “Let’s look at (Iraq in) a strategic context, which we’ve never done.” He meant let’s look at an Iraq solution in the context of the entire Middle East.

The only way to push Iraqis together is to promote a diplomatic initiative that convinces Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite neighbors to stop fighting a proxy war on Iraqi soil. I don’t mean the narrow talks between Crocker and his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, which he admitted at the hearings have gone nowhere. Nor do I mean the conference of Iraq’s neighbors convened by the Iraqis; despite his talents, Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari can’t do it alone.

X Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.