Decision ‘08

The Importance Of A Unity Government

We see many dire hints of evil ‘assocations’ from opponents (and skeptics) of the Iraq War; we are told how such-and-such is friendly to Iran, and so-and-so to Syria, and…and…and….

All this talk rather misses the point that what is needed in Iraq is a legitimate government (or, to use the preferred phrasing, a ‘unity’ government) that has enough members of the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd factions (and subfactions) comfortable with its authority that real progress can be made on improving the security situation and rebuilding the infrastructure and institutions that have remained devestated for too long after the end of major hostilities.

It appears that we are, in fact, witnessing this very dynamic, and I have been finding myself increasingly enthusiastic over the latest events. Major General Rick Lynch puts it this way:

The U.S. military said on Thursday Iraq was moving away from the risk of civil war and insurgent and sectarian bloodshed would fall dramatically when a new government of national unity is formed.

Attacks on civilians had jumped 90 percent across Iraq since a Shiite shrine was bombed in February, but “ethno-sectarian” bloodshed had more than halved in Baghdad in the past week, U.S. spokesman Major General Rick Lynch told a news conference.

“We are not seeing widespread militia operations across Iraq. We are not seeing widespread movement of displaced personnel,” he said. “So we do not see us moving towards a civil war in Iraq. In fact we see us moving away from it.”

The Sunni Arab insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces and the mounting sectarian violence against civilians after the shrine attack raised fears Iraq was sliding into civil war.

Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki hopes to form a new government uniting majority Shiites with Sunni Arabs and Kurds next week, a move widely seen as critical to ending the bloodshed.

“We believe that the people of Iraq … have grown tired of the insurgency, have grown tired of these casualties and indeed are going stop this cycle of violence,” Lynch said.

“And when the government is formed and truly reaches out to the people, we believe you’ll see a great decline in violent activities in Iraq.”

It is precisely that possibility that has the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq worried:

…[W]e believe that any government that is formed in Iraq now — regardless of who its members are, whether they are from the malicious rejectionists, the secularist Kurdish Zionists, or the collaborators that are falsely considered Sunnis — is a government that is an agent, collaborating and allied with the Crusaders. Such a government would become a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Islamic nation.

“America has realized that its tanks, airplanes, huge armies, and its despicable rejectionist agent army will not be able, God willing, to win the battle with the mujahidin. Therefore, America began to rely on a cunning plan seeking through it to outflank jihad and the mujahidin by directing its agents, who are considered Sunnis, to become the rope to be tied around the necks of the Sunni people to rescue the Americans from the quagmire of death and failure in Iraq. Those are the same Sunnis who have taken Islamic symbols as their veil with which to cover their disgraceful acts, and began to appeal to their masters to form both the army and the police force and to throw to the Muslims, as the [Arabic] saying goes, ‘and they put the poison in the honey.’

Translation…the Sunnis have turned against al-Qaeda, and the prospect of a unity government is, by Zarqawi’s own account, a bigger threat than the American military presence. Support for the terrorists was relatively easy to maintain when the fight appeared to be against the ‘crusaders’ who had invaded the homeland. Now that it’s clear that the terror is against Iraqis who are trying to govern, the game is, perhaps, fitfully moving toward the end…

Let us fervantly hope so, in any event…

One Response to “The Importance Of A Unity Government”

1 Swords Crossed » Iraq: War and Politics - Part 2 Says:
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:49 pm
[…] At Red State, they write: You hear a lot these days about war fatigue. I’m feeling it myself–we’re three years into the mission and I am getting fed up. Fed up with the sanctimonious anti-war left, who in the absence of smoking stockpiles of WMD are unwilling or unable to understand the value of a free and stable Iraq and fed up with the equally short-sighted conservatives among whom it is now fashionable to recant earlier support for the Iraq war and declare its failure according to their new-found “historical” perspective. Hindsight is of course supposed to be 20/20, but I am wondering if enough time has yet gone by to give anyone such clarity of vision. At the end of the week, Mark Coffey had two interesting posts (here and here) on the changing political landscape in Iraq that led me to reflect on the state of our ongoing “dialogue” over the decision to invade, which seems to focus alternately on whether we were right or wrong to go in given what is happening in the country now and on the dubious merits of the post-war reconstruction effort. I put dialogue in quotes because it seems to me that there’s precious little debate going on. Pervading “conventional wisdom,” to quote John Kenneth Galbraith, holds that we were wrong and reconstruction has failed. The administration went in without a plan and stubbornly refused to develop one out of stupidity or arrogance. Because of unresolvable sectarian differences that we should have known about going in, the government-that-never-was is a shambles, civil war is raging, and it’s only a matter of time before a pro-Iran ultra-conservative theocracy takes power. The Iraqi security forces are a disaster, if they exist at all. . . . Such conventional wisdom has become the foundation of accepted truth on which most discussions of Iraq now build. What amazes me is the certitude of those who have been willing–even eager–to throw in the towel and declare failure over the last six months. […]