Lest you doubt that Hillary is running in ’08, she’s now wearing a cross. What’s she going to do next, bake cookies?
Washington is alive with speculation about what the James Baker/Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group will recommend after the election. The leaks and statements from Baker aren’t encouraging. There is a suggestion that we would de-emphasize the democracy agenda in Iraq. But it’s not clear what that could possibly mean at this juncture, after we have already established a democratically elected government under a democratically endorsed constitution. Baker has talked of the desirability of talking with our enemies, specifically Iran and Syria. There is nothing wrong with talking to an enemy-Reagan did this-if there is some hope of achieving something from it. It’s doubtful, however, that Iran and Syria are going to become any more supportive of an American ally in their midst merely through our buttering them up with some “dialogue.” Meanwhile, the most important question in Iraq is whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has the will to crack down on the Shiite militias that are one of the main forces making Iraq ungovernable and driving it toward full-blown civil war. He gives mixed signals, although the removal of two death-squad-tainted senior police commanders is encouraging. We have to keep the pressure on him, and should consider forging a series of deadlines for Iraqi performance of the sort that guided Iraq through the political process in the first three years after the invasion. We shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations of Maliki, but neither can we look the other way as he dithers, or worse, accommodates some of the worst political actors in the country.
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