Matt Yglesias

Hubris, Hubris Everywhere

Progressives have sort of gotten beaten down enough that they’ve stopped saying this, but it’s still true that the stated purpose of the surge was to create a window of opportunity in which various Iraqi factions could achieve the sort of political reconciliation that would provide the basis for lasting peace in Iraq. And it’s also still true that that hasn’t happened. And it’s also still true that the fate of the so-called “Sons of Iraq” movement — armed Sunni militias who abandoned anti-American insurgency in favor of an alliance with the United States against AQI but who don’t like the idea of living in a Shiite-dominated Iraq — illustrates the point well. Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl have an op-ed on this:

The “surge” strategy in Iraq, as described by President Bush in January 2007, rested on the belief that tamping down violence would provide a window of opportunity that Iraq’s leaders would use to pursue political reconciliation. But this has not occurred, despite the dramatic security improvements. Indeed, if the problem in 2006 and 2007 was Maliki’s weakness and inability to pursue reconciliation in the midst of a civil war, the issue in 2008 is his overconfidence and unwillingness to entertain any real accommodation with his political adversaries. America’s blank check to the Iraqi government feeds this hubris.

That’s the right diagnosis. Their proposed cure (”make continued security assistance conditional on Maliki carrying through on his commitments to integrate and gainfully employ the Sons of Iraq”) however, sounds a bit like wishful thinking to me. Why not just accept that it’s extremely difficult for the United States government to effectively micromanage political events in Iraq? Suppose we tilt a bit in the direction Kahl & Brimley advise and then Maliki starts feeling too weak to compromise again? Or suppose the SOI develop hubris of their own? Or what if a renewed focus on curbing Shiite ambitions causes a re-emerge of trouble on the Sadrist front that’s been quiet for a little bit now? It may well be true that Maliki is suffering from a case of hubris here, but I think there’s a parallel hubris in the American policy community that assumes an unrealistic capacity to shape events that have a logic of their own.