The sixth war in Iraq

War Five: The surge
2007-2008
Sometime in mid-2006, the Bush administration decided to change course.  Despite public assurances from the White House that the war was going well — and attacks on journalists who claimed otherwise — President Bush and several of his military and political advisers came to the conclusion that more troops were needed, along with a new strategy under a new commanding general, David Petraeus.

In February 2007, Gen. Petraeus (then Lt. Gen. Petraeus) took command in Iraq and implemented what came to be known as “the surge.”

Reinforced with 30,000 extra troops, Petraeus pushed soldiers off big bases on the outskirts of Baghdad and positioned them with Iraqi troops in police stations, abandoned buildings and even shopping malls. It was a fundamental change. Soldiers no longer “commuted” to work. They lived in the battle zone 24/7 and were able to hold territory once they cleared it.

Petraeus also started to pay and arm Sunni tribal leaders to fight with the Americans. The deal was simple: Fight with U.S. forces against al-Qaida and, in exchange, the United States will provide money, power, autonomy and most important, the respect Sunnis felt they’d been denied. Sunnis quickly welcomed the deal. They were losing the civil war to the Shiites and needed an ally.

The Shiite-led government initially rejected the U.S.-Sunni alliance, but later publicly expressed support for the deal as Iraqis welcomed the calm it brought.

War Six: The exit
2009-2011
President Barack Obama set a course to end the war in Iraq. Elected with a promise to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months, Obama modified a plan worked out at the end of the Bush administration. 

The plan calls for U.S. troops to pull back to bases after June 2009. U.S. troops are then to remain in Iraq to safeguard Iraqi elections in December 2009 and the subsequent seating of a new government. After there is a new government in place — expected in the winter or spring of 2010 — most U.S. troops can leave. 

Obama said all U.S. combat brigades would be out of Iraq by August 2010, leaving behind a “residual force” of around 50,000 troops until December 2011. 

After December 2011, all U.S. troops are supposed to be gone. It’s a complicated plan, but has some logic.

December 2009: Iraq elections

Winter/spring 2010: Iraqi government is seated

Summer 2010: U.S. combat troops withdraw

All of 2011: Residual force remains

End of 2011: Final U.S. troops leave.

It’s roughly a three-year withdrawal plan with one basic goal: To protect the Iraqi transition of power and then leave slowly. 

The plan has been welcomed by U.S. military commanders in Iraq, but criticized by some American lawmakers as too slow an exit from a costly war.

So what did the U.S. accomplish?

It took six years and a trillion dollars to replace Saddam’s dictatorship with a somewhat stable government. 

Iraq was a dictatorship. Now Iraq has a “kleptocracy,” a government that exists to steal. 

Larry Kaplow, an old friend from Newsweek who’d been doing excellent reporting in Iraq for years, recently told me there’s a new expression to describe what Baghdad had become: “Iraqi good enough.” Mediocrity, he said, is the accepted norm. His analysis seems about right to me. 

It’s become acceptable, both to American officials in Baghdad and many Iraqis themselves, that Iraqi security forces beat detainees and politicians steal from government coffers; it’s “Iraqi good enough.” 

Iraq isn’t stable, but it’s not in a civil war anymore; it’s “Iraqi good enough.” 

Doctors and intellectuals, who fled the civil war, are no longer leaving the country, but aren’t coming back either; it’s “Iraqi good enough.” 

Is “Iraqi good enough,” good enough? 

Time will tell, or maybe it won’t.

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