Last week saw the first call for a rapid, complete withdrawal from Iraq by a congressman and increasing indications that there will be a partial withdrawal early next year. Americans are tiring of the war. It seems clear that we will be unable to sustain the presence of more than 150,000 troops there for much longer.
Yet there are indications that we are making progress toward ending the insurgency. It is difficult to know how significant they are. The truth is, I doubt that anyone truly knows which way the wind is blowing in Iraq, even the intel people in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Nonetheless, there have been a few signs in recent weeks that things may be looking up for our side. These signs become much more significant if you keep in mind that the insurgency has at least two parts that do not have the same goals past getting the Americans out. The jihadists--Zarqawi's group--are almost assuredly incapable of compromise. The local insurgents may not be. Indeed, omne of the revelations of Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory is that in December 2003 "They were indicating a readiness, a desire, to come out into the open and become political. They wanted to talk to the United States directly." (p. 64) Nothing came of it then, but it suggest that we may be able to coopt at least part of the opposition and make our counterinsurgency efforts more effective. Indeed, General Abizaid and Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed in June that such talks had already occurred. Recently, some insurgents have tried to reach out to the Iraqi government and Ambassador Khalilzad spoke again of reaching out to a part of the insurgency.
Any willingness on either side to talk becomes more important as the disenchantment with Zarqawi increases. The bombing in Amman seems to have accelerated the spread of a sense that Zarqawi had been going too far. Writing in The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus, Stephen Ulph writes of "the rising controversy over the targeting of civilians in Iraq, and the negative response to high-profile errors such as the toll of Jordanian Muslims in the November 9 Amman bombings." Even Zawahiri, Bin Ladin's right-hand man, believes that Zarqawi's beheadings and attacks on Shiites are alienating Iraqis if one can believe the letter that he purportedly wrote in an effort to convince Zarqawi to adopt more careful tactics. Perhaps more important, if true, is the story from The Washington Post that Iraqis are turning in insurgents.
None of this is to suggest that the war in Iraq is close to being won. As I wrote above, nobody say say for certain whether it is or not. But Zarqawi's actions show that, unlike the North Vietnamese, he has a tin ear for public opinion and a political outlook that not all in the Arab world share. The possibility that we can coopt the opposition was not present in Vietnam. This may be the difference that makes this war winnable.
But we have to show a patience, a subtlety, a willingness to tolerate political differences, and a wisdom that we have rarely shown in Iraq since we defeated Saddam Hussein. And we have to deal with allies among the Shiites and Kurds who have their own agendas that may make a strategy based on coopting part of the opposition impossible. Almost anything is possible.
