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Iraq Merely Tolerates Political Stalemate

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 27, 2007

As a wall of pessimism begins to crack, where's the diplomacy?

Watching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice making repeated trips to Israel to try to broker some kind of deal between Israelis and Palestinians, while Iraq remains politically unresolved, leaves me feeling like my house is burning down and the fire department has decided to stop along the way to get two cats out of a tree.

At one level, I just don't get it. It's clear that the surge by U.S. troops has really dampened violence in Iraq. So don't we now need a surge in diplomacy to finish the job?

It often feels to me as if Rice just wants to keep Iraq at arm's length and hope that it will somehow end up on someone else's report card.

If you were President Bush and your whole legacy was riding on the outcome of this war, wouldn't you be sending your top diplomat to Baghdad to work with Iraqis and their neighbors to broker a political settlement and not let them grow complacent that they have an open-ended commitment from the American people?

(It makes you glad Democrats are still banging their drum.)

But then I talk to people in Baghdad and look at what is really evolving there and I say to myself: "Maybe you're missing something that Secretary Rice knows - that there isn't going to be any formal political reconciliation moment in Iraq, grand bargain or White House signing ceremony. The surge has made Iraq safe, not for formal political reconciliation yet, but safe for an 'ATM peace.'"

That is, each of the Iraqi factions basically agrees to live and let live with the new lines drawn by the last two years of civil war and the Baghdad government serves as an ATM cash machine - supporting the army and local security groups and dispensing oil revenues to the provincial governors and tribal chiefs from each community.

Sure, the Shiites haven't passed a law to let more Sunni Baathists into the government, but they're still letting some back. Yes, they haven't passed an oil law, but the government is still spreading around the cash.

Michael Gordon, The Times' top military expert, said the phrase circulating in the military lately to describe the situation evolving in Iraq is "accommodation without reconciliation."

The various parties basically accept the new imbalance of power - Shiites on top, but allowing the Kurds and Sunnis to have a share - and the political struggle continues with lower levels of violence.

Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times.

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