No time to ignore Iraq

In a land that seems increasingly far away, 140,000 U.S. troops still labor – fortunately with less risk to life and limb than during some previous time periods. And, with a tentative agreement between the U.S. and the Iraqi prime minister to have most troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, perhaps we’re even within sight of a close to this particularly misbegotten chapter in American history.

And yet. As with all things Iraqi so far anyway, powder kegs remain. The much vaunted Sunni Awakening seems to be somewhat less than pleasing to the ruling Shiites, who apparently now want some of the Sunni leaders arrested and tried for their previous ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq. Provincial elections – scheduled for December, last I saw a report on them – may prove problematic or may get postponed again. Who runs Kirkuk is not resolved. Whether Muqtada al-Sadr chooses to fight or stick to politics is another great unknown. Meanwhile, lots of Iraqis remain refugees.

I would hope that whoever becomes president in January will be able to approach Iraq with a lot of flexibility. I am not enamored of Barack Obama’s call for a specific timetable (although he has plenty of asterisks attached to it), nor do I think much of John McCain’s almost sole emphasis on “victory.” I would mostly like to see an Iraq that is stable and secure for all of its people; that may mean we have to keep a sort of peace-keeping force there for a long time – perhaps even longer than the majority Shiites want. We may also have to acknowledge that most of the time, Iraq is going to be very friendly with Iran. How a president walks this tightrope, I don’t know, except that a huge emphasis on diplomacy would seem to be in order.

Meanwhile, Gen. Petraeus calls the current relative calm tenuous: “It’s not durable yet. It’s not self-sustaining,” he told the New York Times.

I personally can live with an extended, and extensive, troop presence in Iraq as long as it means Iraq is getting safer day by day for its citizens (and our soldiers). I don’t want our troops used to baby-sit a civil war, though, or worse, be on one side or the other of sectarian bloodbaths. Yet there is some room for hope, which certainly didn’t exist two years ago, that we may finally be on something close to the right course. It sort of reaffirms the saying that we as a country usually end up doing the right thing -- after we’ve tried everything else.