Opinion and Iraq

On the News Hour on 19 September an opinion poll on the war in Iraq was described as showing a "wider and hardened partisan gap" in the United States. Strange. The gap should be narrowing. In early September retired Marine General James Jones testified before Congress and stated that the U.S. should lighten its "footprint" in Iraq and look less like an occupier. A couple of days later, while testifying before Congress, General Petraeus celebrated Iraqis in Anbar Province running their own communities. It can be taken as fact that more Iraqis see the presence of U.S. troops as protection from violence. Also cement barriers are described by Iraqis as having reduced attacks against them. Iraqis appear to be getting tired of civil war. Meanwhile a majority of Iraqis outside Kurdish territory do see U.S. forces as occupiers and remain opposed to that occupation, with some willing and able to fight that occupation. General Petraeus recognizes different areas in Iraq should be considered differently. Attacks on U.S. forces rising from hostility toward their presence will, of course, subside with the kind of pull back advocated by General Jones. As for al-Qaeda-in-Iraq. Following the recent assassination of Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha of Anbar we see more Sunni opposition to al-Qaeda, namely the leader of the Shammar tribe around the city of Mosul, Fawwaz al-Jarba, forming a coalition of Sunni Arab tribes with Kurdish, Christian and Yazidi groups against al-Qaeda. The position of the Bush administration is that as soon as the Iraqis stand up we will stand down. With the rise in opposition to al-Qaeda the argument for staying in Iraq to fight al-Qaeda diminishes. Democrats favor leaving a force in the region, outside Iraqi communities with which to strike at al-Qaeda, so the gap in differences about Iraq among Americans is largely how soon troops can return home. The Bush administration favors keeping as many troops in Iraq as is necessary to allow the Iraqi government its ability "to stand up." And this presumably is what Senator McCain means by "winning." Democrats, on the other hand, want self-reliance and responsibility among the Iraqis sooner rather than later, as expressed by General John Abizaid, regional commander and Petraeus' boss, when he testified before Congress back in November, 2006. And some take note of the majority in Iraq against our presence there, confirmed in the most recent opinion poll, and are opposed to forcing our will against others in the manner of empires.

President Bush and his supporters are selective in their taking opinion from generals, with the opinions of recently retired generals such as Abizaid deserving some credibility by virtue of no longer being on the Bush team.

President Bush remains certain about achieving his goal in Iraq, but a government in Iraq that is the democracy that he claims he wants there may be hostile to the United States, and Iraq may be more like Lebanon than some other model. In Lebanon a civil war began in 1975, and still today there is unrest, assassinations and ethnic divisions with politicians having their own militias with which to intimidate rivals.

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