What happened
The U.S. has made “significant” progress in stabilizing Iraq over the past six months, but the security gains are too fragile to permit major troop reductions for the foreseeable future, the top U.S. general in Iraq told Congress this week. In testimony to the Senate’s Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Gen. David Petraeus said the “surge” of 20,000 troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy had largely succeeded in defeating terrorists affiliated with the group calling itself al Qaida in Iraq. But he said that a new threat was being posed by heavily armed, well-trained fighters in “special groups” backed by Iran. Petraeus refused to offer a timetable for further withdrawals after July, when troop strength is scheduled to return to its pre-surge level of 140,000. “We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “The progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible.”
While Petraeus testified, U.S. and Iraqi forces battled militias loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in eastern Baghdad and Basra. In a message on his website, al-Sadr threatened to call off his Mahdi Army’s seven-month cease-fire, which has contributed to the decline in violence. Reports emerged that as many as 1,000 members of Iraq’s army and police force, including top officers, deserted during the Iraqi government’s assault on Basra two weeks ago.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Petraeus said nothing new, said the Los Angeles Times. He “avoided offering any benchmarks” that would permit a U.S. withdrawal. Instead, he asked for an “indefinite” commitment of U.S. troops, warning of increased Iranian influence in Iraq and the region. But while the administration gropes for a strategy to counter that influence, Iran’s leaders are content to watch “the Great Satan” flounder, as “their proxies bleed him white.”
What the columnists said
The administration succeeded in “buying time” with Petraeus’ testimony, said H.D.S. Greenway in The Boston Globe. But for what? There’s no political reconciliation between the Sunnis and Shiites in sight, and the measures we have taken to reduce violence—supporting both the Iraqi security forces and the Sunni “Awakening” councils—could backfire on us. The U.S. is now “in the extraordinary position of arming both sides in the incipient civil war.”
Yes, violence is down is Iraq, said Mark Benjamin in Salon.com. But why? Not even Petraeus credited the surge. Instead, he talked “about cutting deals.” Various Sunni and Shiite groups “have agreed to shoot at each other and U.S. troops less often—at least for now.” If those deals fall apart, U.S. troops will be “caught in the crossfire.”
Such deals are how Iraq will achieve political reconciliation, said David Brooks in The New York Times. Iraq’s elites are too weak and fractious to impose a “top-down” resolution. Instead, “order is achieved through fluid balance-of-power agreements between local groups” with strong “incentives to keep the peace.” Sunnis know they’d lose a civil war against Shiite forces, while Shiite leaders recognize that “their own prestige and power drops the more they fight.” But war critics refuse to grasp that “there has been political progress. It just doesn’t look the way we expected it to.”
What next?
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who also gave Senate testimony this week, said the U.S. and Iraq are negotiating a permanent agreement that will set the framework for a continued U.S. presence in Iraq. He said the treaty would ensure that the next U.S. president “arrives in office with a stable foundation on which to base policy positions.” But Democrats dispute Crocker’s insistence that the agreement does not need congressional approval. Vowing a fight, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said, “You need the permission of the Congress if you’re going to bind the next president of the United States in anything you agree to.”
-
Putin’s threat to fracture Ukrainefeature Fears that Russia was building a pretext for an invasion of eastern Ukraine grew, as pro-Kremlin protesters occupied government buildings in three cities.
-
Curbing NSA surveillance
feature The White House said it will propose a broad overhaul of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.
-
Downsizing the military
feature A new budget plan for the Pentagon would save hundreds of billions of dollars by taking the military off its post-9/11 war footing.
-
Putin ratchets up pressure on Ukraine
feature Russian President Vladimir Putin put 150,000 troops at the Ukraine border on high alert and cut off $15 billion in financial aid.
-
Ukraine on the brink of civil war
feature Ukraine’s capital was engulfed in flames and violence when hundreds of riot police launched an assault on an anti-government protest camp.
-
Ukraine at the breaking point
feature An alliance of opposition groups vowed protests would continue until President Viktor Yanukovych is removed from power.
-
Dim prospects for Syrian talks
feature A long-awaited Syrian peace conference in Montreux, Switzerland, quickly degenerated into a cross fire of bitter accusations.
-
The fight over jobless benefits
feature A bill to restore federal benefits for the long-term unemployed advanced when six Republican senators voted with Democrats.