Washington’s ‘benchmarks’ for Maliki: Threatening what?

Many voices in the US policymaking elite currently like to couch their discussion of the country’s Iraq policy in terms of establishing firm “benchmarks” for Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad, with the threat that–
What?
I find this “benchmarks” aspect of the US policy discourse by turns hilariously funny, tragically misguided, or just plain mystifying.
There are two issues here. The first has to do with the US claim that it has any right at all to establish “benchmarks” for what most of these same people (and certainly the ones inside the Bush administration) also claim is the “soveriegn government” of Iraq. Well, many JWN readers may agree with me that the latter claim is quite unfounded– Iraq is still, in fact and under international law, still a territory under foreign military occupation. But it’s kind of interesting to note the contradiction between that and the other claim, anyway? (If truth is the first casualty of war, perhaps logic is the second?)
The second issue is one in pure political realism. Like “benchmarks” in many other contexts, these ones come with an associated threat of some kind of sanctions to back them up. I used to establish “benchmarks”, for example, regarding the school performance of my son when he was still a teenager… along with threat that if he failed to meet them there would be some kind of sanction against him.
But if “PM” Maliki fails to meet the “behcnmarks” being discussed by Washington– what then?
As I see it, the strategic “thinkers” (hollow laugh permitted there) inside the Bush administration may have had two different kinds of sanction in mind. The first, that if Maliki doesn’t dance completely to their tune– by joining the campaign to isolate and suppress the Sadrists, for example– then, fairly evidently, they were planning (and indeed, almost openly threatening) to unseat him.
The original version of that plan relied on building up a credible threat that an alternative player within the Shiites’ broad UIA alliance– SCIRI’s head, Abdul-Aziz Hakim– could build a parliamentary coalition strong enough to outflank the Maliki-Sadr bloc. That plan got stymied by the firm edict that the UIA/Sistani issued on December 23rd, to the effect that the Sadrists were still a full and protected part of the UIA alliance, and that Hakim had better stop playing his dangerous games with the Americans. Hakim apparently bowed to that.
Possibly, the US overlords in Baghdad have plans for other schemes whereby they could mount a credible “unseating”-type threat against Maliki. A coup led by Iyad Allawi, perhaps? (Not very credible, imho: Allawi and which army?) Still, as I said, logic and rational assessment/reasoning are not exactly the hallmarks of this bunch of increasingly tired and desperate rulers in Washington.
But I said there were two possible kinds of sanction with which the Americans might be backing up their demand to Maliki re the “benchmarks.” The other one, which has also been heard from Washington in recent weeks, is of the order of “If you don’t dance to our tune we’ll pack up and leave you and your country to its fate.”
This threat has some credible aspects, and some non-credible aspects (but more, I think, of the latter.)
Credible: that the US citizenry and leadership may indeed be getting very near to the point of deciding to simply “pack up” and leave Iraq; and also, that the situation inside Iraq does indeed currently look quite horrible and may continue to be equally– or even more?– horrible for at least a while after the American troops leave.
Non-credible (as a threat against Maliki, at present): the fact that he actually does want the US troops to leave— and has said this on a number of occasions. So to wield this as a “threat” against him has strong tragico-farcical aspects to it.
Now it’s true that neither Maliki nor, as far as I can figure, any other Iraqi at all wants the US troops to leave in such a way that there is a bloodbath after they leave. And it’s also true that some of the presently reported US plans– such as bringing large units of Kurdish pesh merga down to Baghdad to help with the planned next “clean-up” there– may threaten to do just that.
It is also true both that there is already an extremely lethal cycle of Sunni-Shiite sectarian fighting underway throughout many areas of Greater Baghdad as well as in other areas… and, equally importantly, that this cycle of violence is being fed– from each side– by the irresponsible fear-mongering and incitement of powerful neighboring nations.
So the threat of a massively escalating fitna (that is, complete and perhaps genocidal socio-political breakdown) inside Iraq after a US withdrawal is not entirely an empty one.
But here’s the thing: Such a breakdown inside Iraq will also massively burn the US troops as they attempt to leave the country and is therefore completely against the interests of any any responsible US leader or politician.
I can’t stress that point enough.
If there is a complete fitna inside Iraq, moreover, it will not be limited to there, but will affect the (pro-US) status quo interests throughout the whole region. And though there may be an irresponsible few among the neocons or others who might not be disturbed by the prospect of a broad Sunni-Shiite sectarian war starting to rage across great portions of the Middle East (just as many Americans and other westerners did not mind much– or even were quietly happy– when Iran and Iraq slugged it out in very damaging regular warfare for eight years in the 1980s)… still, to do anything at all that allows such a broad, and always unpredictable, conflagration in the region today would be (a) the height of callousness and cruelty, as well as (b) extremely damaging to the interests of the US citizenry for many decades to come.
Therefore, I cannot imagine that anyone in the US policy discussion would be prepared even to contemplate scenarios that would involve “heating up” the sectarian tensions inside Iraq in the context of a simultaneous attempt to withdraw from it.
As I’ve written many times before, it is in the strong interests of the US citizenry that our leaders choose as quickly as possible the path of a troop withdrawal from Iraq that is speedy, total, orderly (and generous.) Any kind of orderly withdrawal will rely on there being inside Iraq some form of at least minimal intra-Iraqi consensus that will allow this withdrawal to take place. It is therefore in our interests as US citizens to urge our leaders to do all they can to help the Iraqis to build that consensus.
A chaotic withdrawal-under-fire as Iraq burns is in absolutely nobody’s interests at all.
… Which leaves the Bush administration with what as a credible threat to back up any “benchmarks” it lays down for Maliki? Well actually, nothing at all. But here’s the other little-discussed aspect of this whole “benchmarks for Maliki” discussion: Maliki himself is, at this point, just about irrelevant.