The Iraq War has shown how high is the pain threshold of the West. Five years after the invasion just after 5.30am (Baghdad time) on March 19, 2003 the suicide bombings, murders, firefights and body bags have become a familiar part of our landscape.
The war is much discussed in the United States presidential election campaign. But most Americans and Europeans display vastly less interest in the Middle East than in troubles closer to home the global banking crisis foremost among them.
They have grown used to Iraq in the way they do to a chronic personal ailment. It is there. It is nasty. They wish it would go away. But it does not inflict the sort of agonising pain that causes democracies to force urgent action upon their governments.
On the bleak anniversary, statisticians measure the cost. It is said by some that the US faces a total bill of $US3trillion, and still counting. About 4000 American soldiers, 171 British and anything between 200,000 and 600,000 Iraqis have died. It would be madness to describe these numbers as acceptable. But they have not proved so unacceptable that the US or British governments, or even the Iraqi administration in Baghdad, have found it necessary to adopt any radical shift of policy.
The Shi'ite-dominated Government of Nouri al-Maliki still recoils from empowering Iraq's Sunnis. The Bush Administration declines to make serious advances to Iran and Syria, vital players in any credible Iraqi outcome, or to qualify its unstinting support for Israel. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown maintains a token British contingent outside Basra, which does little, but avoids an outright breach with the US.
It seems futile to waste words rehearsing once more the folly of the invasion, launched under false pretences, on the basis of weapons of mass destruction evidence that some of us, including me, were foolish enough to swallow. Likewise, the blunders of the early occupation are common ground. All that matters now are the present and future.
George W. Bush's troop surge has been a tactical military success. Though violence in February and this month has increased from the low January level, with 10 US soldiers dying last week, far fewer Iraqi are dying than at this time last year. Local ceasefires have made notable progress, with militias receiving American pay to refrain from attacks on either US forces or other factions.
Al-Qaeda insurgents have suffered repeated military defeats, and political eclipse. Many Sunni communities have rejected al-Qaeda's murderous hegemony, with the cost of allowing their towns and villages to become battlefields.
The great unanswered question is whether this amounts to sustainable progress, or merely to a temporary hiatus.
Dr Stephen Biddle, of the US Council on Foreign Relations, has acquired an intimate knowledge of Iraq, and offered an interesting assessment to the House armed services committee in January. While accepting that all the options remain bleak, he suggested there was now a better chance of salvaging something and argued that a long-term US peacekeeping commitment perhaps for 20 years was essential. "We are the only plausible candidate for this role for now no one else is lining up to don a blue helmet and serve in a UN mission to Iraq," he said. "We are not widely loved by Iraqis ... Yet we are the only party to today's conflict that no other party sees as a threat of genocide ... we are tolerated across Iraq today in a way that is unique among the parties."
Biddle had no delusions about the weakness, approaching paralysis, of the national Government in Baghdad. Shi'ite prime minister Maliki could more readily live with continuing war than address the political challenges of reconciliation and compromises with the Sunnis, he said. However, "a patchwork quilt of uneasy local ceasefires" could be attainable, with adjoining areas run by Sunni and Shi'ite militias, and essential services provided by trusted co-religionists.
Yet massive uncertainties overhang the vision propounded by Biddle and others. Will the local ceasefires and reduction of violence be maintained, as US troop numbers on the ground inevitably decline? Can intercommunal stresses, not least with the Kurds, be contained while the key issue of dividing oil revenues remains unresolved? And whoever becomes US president in January, will the American people be willing to sacrifice the blood and treasure involved in a long-term troop commitment to Iraq?
Whether John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton wins, each will face the same dilemma: would any of the three accept responsibility for presiding over a possible bloodbath, if he or she gives an order to bring the boys home?
A familiar tension will persist, between the visible cost of staying, and the huge unknown of getting out. If violence on the ground seems containable, if the present flickering candle-flames of optimism remain, the next president seems likely to persevere in Iraq. If, on the other hand, pain increases, bloodshed worsens, then the US people will surely force the hand of the White House, and insist upon a closure.
Current US political strategy in Iraq is probably as enlightened as it is going to get. The big, empty field is that of wider American policy in the Middle East, which is critical in determining the context in which Iraq's fate will be decided. Under Bush, this has been sterile. In theory at least, a big chance awaits a new president making a new start with Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The Iraq experience has laid bare the limits of raw military power. It would be naive to suggest that an abrupt US departure would promise the country a happy future. But there seems no purpose in a continued US military presence, except in the context of new policies vastly different from those that prevail.
Guardian
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