Iraq: Kerry, Cole, Ignatius

I’ve been working on a conference paper on (mainly) African topics these past couple of days. So I failed to produce “instant” commentary re the plan that John Kerry proposed for exiting from Iraq, in yesterday’s NYT.
Maybe I’ll come back to it later. But here, I’ll just note the following:

(1) Kerry has come a long way since the time– not so long ago!– when he was urging the administration to deal with the Iraq situation by increasing the troop levels.
(2) He is now urging “a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year’s end.” This is good– even though it’s not spelled out exactly as being the “speedy, total, and generous” US withdrawal that I’ve been urging for nearly a year now. I’m particularly worried about the qualifier “combat” that Kerry put there… What other kinds of US forces are there that might remain according to his plan? Perhaps special ops forces, or MPs, or…
(3) In addition, when Kerry advocates this withdrawal schedule, it’s still conditional on the Iraqis “putting together a government” first….
(4) In fact, this business of placing conditions and demands on the Iraqis is integral to the general approach of his piece, which is to seek to “cover” what is actually a call for (some kind of) withdrawal behind a lot of imperialist-sounding rhetorical bombast… “Iraqi politicians should be told… !”
(5) But this is precisely the point at which his approach is shown to be thin, blustery rhetoric, because what they are to be told is this: “that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military.” Excellent idea! So, John, why don’t we just make plans to “immediately” (i.e., as rapidly as possible) withdraw the military anyway, and forego all the bluff and bluster?? And not just make the withdrawal plans, but also announce and implement them?
(6) For all the operational thin-ness of what Kerry proposed, at least it’s an important development in the upper ranks of the Democratic Party leadership that he has moved this far toward a pro-withdrawal position. (Even if he still feels he has to cover his behind with the rhetorical bombast.)
(7) So when will Hillary and the rest of the party leadership be following him?

There are actually a couple of other things from yesterday that I want to comment on when I have time.
One was Juan Cole’s argument that,

Exit is easy. Exit with honor will be the hardest thing the United States of America has ever done in its over two centuries of history. Exit without honor will endanger the security of the United States for decades.

I’d love to engage with Juan on what exactly he means by “honor.” I guess I have no plans to see him any time soon; but it will be a good thing to talk about.
For my part, I’m fairly distrustful when guys start to talk about “honor” in any context– but particularly in the context of a still-aspiring world hegemon like the mainstream US, it sounds like a cover for keeping the hegemonic aspirations well in place. Personally, I believe the longterm interests of the US citizenry are best served if we seek to reintegrate ourselves into the world community on a respectful, nonviolent, and egalitarian basis that recognizes that actually, we make up only around 4% of humankind… So any aspiration to act hegemonic, boss other people around, change their regimes, invade their countries, etc, is one of pure arrogance (and actually, of zero “honor.”) And in the longer-than-tomorrow term it is doomed not only to fail but to bring great human suffering as it does so.
… In addition yesterday, there was an intriguing piece about Iraqi politics from David Pugnacious in the WaPo, that featured reports of phone conversations he’d had with Zal Khalilzad and Barham Saleh, among others.
It includes this:

Khalilzad recounted the items that the Iraqi political factions have agreed on in private negotiations over the past month. On Sunday, the leaders signed off on the last of these planks of a government of national unity. The Iraqis have saved the hardest issue for last — the names of the politicians who will hold the top jobs. That bitter fight will play out over the next several weeks.
An example of what’s in these unity documents is a passage that calls for “a timetable so the Iraqi forces assume the security tasks completely and end the mission of the multinational force in Iraq.” That timetable language is vague, but it would allow the new government to say it is committed to ending the American occupation. Interestingly, U.S. officials said yesterday that this passage on troop withdrawal is consistent with Bush administration policy.

Just worth spending an extra moment pondering there: the amazingly hubris-revealing content of that first sentence… But all of that excerpt is very, very interesting.
And then there’s this:

the Iraqi factions agreed on two bodies that weren’t mentioned in the constitution. They endorsed a 19-member consultative national security council, which represents all the political factions. And they agreed on a ministerial security council, which will have the Sunni deputy prime minister as its deputy chairman. Shiite leaders have tentatively agreed that the defense minister will be a Sunni. And for the key job of interior minister, the dominant Shiite faction, known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, appears ready to accept the replacement of one of its members by an independent Shiite, perhaps Qasim Dawood, a man acceptable to most Sunni leaders.

Interesting, huh? Qasim Dawood (a.k.a. variously as Kassim Daoud, etc etc) was of course the person who last week was reported to be the first of the UIA parliamentarians to speak out openly against Jaafari’s nomination as PM…
I’ll write more about all of this– and more about the real reasons behind the political ‘impasse’ in Iraq, as best I understand them– as soon as I can. For now, I have to get back (conceptually) to Africa.