A reality check on Iraq

IS IRAQ IN THE MIDST of a civil war or, as Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, only in danger of moving toward one? For purposes of U.S. military and political planning, that may be a distinction without a difference.

What matters is that sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, is, in Abizaid’s words, “as bad as I’ve seen it” and getting worse. That is a reality that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki essentially ignored last month when, in a speech to Congress, he portrayed the carnage in his country as a struggle between a new democratic government and an alliance of Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists. That simplistic narrative cried out for a reality check, and Abizaid has provided it.

It isn’t just American observers who are worried. In a memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair, a British diplomat in Baghdad recently warned that “the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy.” Some in the U.S. military take comfort in the fact that the Iraqi army has not yet broken down into sectarian fighting forces, a textbook precursor to civil war seen everywhere from the Balkans to the Mason-Dixon line. Yet Iraqi police forces already are taking sides, with some joining the deadly militias responsible for Iraqi-on-Iraqi killings.

That violence has forced a change in U.S. military tactics, resulting in the deployment of 3,700 troops in the Iraqi capital -- a move that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) fears might undermine pacification efforts elsewhere. In the longer term, generals concede that tying up so many U.S. resources in Iraq makes it more difficult for the military to confront extremist terrorism around the globe. And the escalating civil strife will force the White House to confront the implications of Bush’s June statement that “success in Iraq depends upon the Iraqis.” The corollary of that assertion seems to be that, if the Iraqis fail to unite their country, the U.S. at some point will have to acknowledge that fact and consider alternatives to a continuing military presence -- such as a partition of Iraq or the introduction of an international peacekeeping force.

With more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, Americans are going to be increasingly reluctant to shed more of their countrymen’s blood for a multiethnic nation that is unsure about how or even whether it should continue to coexist. Abizaid’s testimony should be ringing in the ears not only of Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld but also in those of Prime Minister Maliki. None of them has the luxury of being able to tolerate even a “low-intensity” civil war in Iraq.