When Congressman Ed Perlmutter returned from Iraq earlier this month, he said he saw a “glimmer of hope” in the battered country.
A few days later, when he was in the Middle East, Gov. Bill Ritter said he saw that same “glimmer of hope.”
The glimmer is both a tenuous lull in the sectarian violence that has rocked that country for years, and the beginnings of some ground level of cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites.
The U.S. government and military leaders must seize this moment of stability — or at least what passes for stability in Iraq — and begin outlining an endgame for our presence there.
“It is important to understand that there is hope and it’s moving in the right direction,” Ritter told reporters.
The glimmer, in Perlmutter’s words, must be capitalized on.
“The window for progress is really narrow here and the coalition forces, the U.S., need to provide expertise to restore services and infrastructure so that the Iraqis can then build on it and take this place over,” Perlmutter told the Rocky Mountain News earlier this month.
“The Iraqi patience is not going to be long, and certainly our patience here in the U.S. is not long.”
The surge can’t last forever, either. Our military already is stretched thin. Some suggest its breaking point will come next spring, and a gradual troop draw-down will be inevitable. That’s why it’s so important that the Iraqi government, with U.S. support, find some way to create ongoing stability in its country and reach a political consensus on how to deal with its warring factions.
It’s long been suggested that some sort of compromise among the factions would emanate from the Iraqi government.
But, as one recent report indicates, there have been some positive “bottom-up” developments. Some Sunni groups once aligned with al-Qaeda are working with the U.S. forces, and the Sunnis now want to participate in the Iraqi government.
That’s part of the glimmer of hope, but it can be fleeting.
The Iraqis have missed most of the benchmarks that Congress set for them, and the Bush administration continues to lower the bar, making it difficult for the rest of us to be able to judge real progress.
When Congress resumes debate on funding for the Iraq war, one of its benchmarks ought to be some type of increased Sunni presence in the Iraqi government.
Our troops have done the job that’s been asked of them. This year’s troop surge has accomplished more than what most politicians predicted.
Now, our leaders must articulate a clear plan for leaving Iraq that capitalizes on the gains made on the ground this year. They owe that to our troops.
