Washington
When Democrats and Republicans brawled in Congress last month over the future of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, they agreed on precious little.
On one point, however, there was notable unanimity on Capitol Hill: The American venture in Iraq would be in far worse shape without Zalmay Khalilzad.
Khalilzad is the U.S. ambassador – the American pro-consul, really – in Iraq. An Afghan-American, and one of a very few high-ranking Muslim U.S. diplomats, he was dispatched to Baghdad after deftly handling the violent, tangled skeins of regional politics as our ambassador to Afghanistan.
Khalilzad is a “great asset,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Carter and is otherwise a severe critic of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.
His longtime friend “did superbly in helping the Afghans to commit themselves on a stable political development,” said Brzezinski. “We’re lucky to have someone in Baghdad who is candid, who is realistic, and who thinks strategically, and, last but not least, who knows the region.”
Brzezinski introduced Khalilzad at a standing-room-only lunchtime talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank here, last week. The ambassador spoke frankly in his prepared remarks, and even more candidly in the question session that followed. He is a foreign policy professional, in his mid-50s, with a shock of silver hair and a grin like Jon Stewart’s.
Khalilzad’s ability to tug segments of Iraq’s hostile Sunni minority into the political process is one of a few important American successes in recent months. Indeed, it represents the core of our hopes.
“A tectonic shift has taken place in the political orientation of the Sunni Arab community,” he said. “A year ago, Sunni Arabs were outside of the political process and hostile to the United States.
“Today, Sunni Arabs are full participants,” said Khalilzad. “They have largely come to see the United States as an honest broker in helping Iraq’s communities come together around … a plan to stabilize the country.”
Moreover, said the ambassador, “Al-Qaeda in Iraq have been significantly weakened during the past year … not only from the recent killing of Zarqawi, but also from the capture or killing of a number of other senior leaders.
“Sunni Arabs increasingly understand that the terrorists are not interested in the future of Iraq, and that al-Qaeda’s leaders see Iraqis as cannon fodder in an effort to instigate a war of civilizations,” he said.
The bad news, said Khalilzad, is that America’s foes have adjusted their tactics. U.S. troops remain targets of opportunity but the insurgents, with considerable success, are now more focused on slaughtering civilians, in the hope of fomenting civil war.
“Violent sectarianism is now the main challenge,” said Khalilzad, midway through a week that saw the bloody streets of Baghdad soaked by a fresh wave of atrocities. He confessed that the coalition’s current, ballyhooed campaign to establish order in Iraq’s capital “has not produced the results I expected.”
The political situation may be improving, but out on the streets “things have gotten worse,” Khalilzad conceded.
The American people will face a long, costly occupation – or a staggering defeat – if Iraq’s new government cannot give restore order. Quickly.
“It is imperative for the new Iraqi government to make major progress in dealing with this challenge in the next six months,” said Khalilzad. “There is a risk that the sectarian conflict will expand, [and] state institutions will be overwhelmed.”
U.S. troops will soon launch “focused stabilization operations” to help the Iraqi government battle the militias and death squads and stave off civil war. The government must “re-establish the state’s monopoly on force, which is a central task of state-building,” said Khalilzad.
But Khalilzad echoed the warnings of Gen. George Casey, the coalition commander, and other U.S. military leaders: This has to be Iraq’s fight.
An extended American occupation will be counter-productive. “If one stays too long, we add to the difficulties,” said the ambassador. “We are aware of those dangers and are trying to calibrate this.”
A defeat in Iraq would be a serious setback in America’s war against Islamic terrorism, Khalilzad said, but there are more than strategic questions involved: Americans began this war and have a “moral” responsibility to see it through.
“We have to do everything that we can, as good people thinking about our own future and the future of the world and the future of the Iraqis,” he said. It is crucial that “we do what we can to have a good end in terms of this, what we have started.”
It’s a political year, and straight talk is hard to come by in the nation’s capital. The administration seems to think that Republican candidates will best be served in the fall election by reducing America’s choice in Iraq to victory that honors the sacrifice of the fallen vs. a cowardly cut and run.
But after three years, and tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi injured and dead, the American people are wiser than that. The administration would do well to follow Khalilzad’s example, turn down the partisan heat, and appeal for Americans’ continued support with the kind of realism he offered last week.
John Aloysius Farrell’s column appears each Sunday in Perspective. Read and comment on his columns at The Denver Post’s Washington Web log (denverpostbloghouse.com/ washington).
