Withdrawal at any cost could destroy Iraq

A couple of weeks ago I wondered in this space about who was winning the Battle of Basra. That column expressed surprise and relief at how well the Iraqi army was performing. Still, at the time a lot of ink was expended on how Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had overplayed his hand in taking on Shiite militias and had suffered setbacks. I got a bit of e-mail grief from anti-war readers a couple of days later when it was reported that 1,000 Iraqi troops had deserted as the fighting raged.

Now comes news that over the weekend the Iraqi army had taken the last bastions held in Basra by the Mahdi militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. No doubt the Madhi army escaped to fight another day, that it remains armed and menacing, and that Sadr still can cause much trouble. But it appears the Iraqi government has won the Battle of Basra. This was not the climactic battle for Iraq's future, but it is not insignificant, either.

The media have tended to cover Basra as part of a general uptick in fighting across Iraq, with the violence reaching the worst levels in a year. What that characterization misses is the combat largely is the result of Iraqi and coalition forces being on the offensive. A year ago, it was the enemy that had the initiative. This time, it's Maliki who decided to take on the militias in Basra. Now he's carrying the fight, heavily supported, it's true, by U.S. forces, to Sadr's militia in Sadr City in Baghdad. And it's coalition forces who are attacking al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents at Mosul. Yes, the enemy responded with a couple of massive suicide bombings, but again those come across as a reaction to the offensive against our foes.

Gen. David Petraeus warned in his recent report to Congress the gains made by the military surge he orchestrated over the last year are fragile and reversible. Maybe a week or month from now, some catastrophe will blow up and Iraq will collapse back into being the disaster it was a year ago. And Iran continues to play a malevolent role there.

But for now, the news out of Iraq trends positive. Sunni and Kurdish leaders express support for Maliki's operations. A Sunni bloc that exited the government last year is reported to be poised to return. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, talks of an "Iraqi political spring." The Sunni Awakening movement so vital to turning around what once seemed like a hopeless cause in Anbar province soldiers on. In response to the offensive against his militia in Sadr City, Sadr has threatened full-scale war, but such warnings from him may be starting to sound as much like bravado as the huge threat he once posed.

Furthermore, for the first time, Iraq took part in a meeting over the weekend of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council, made up of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. A larger organization of Arab states meets in Kuwait today. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is attending and pressing for further demonstration of support for Iraq. Iraqi debts to Arab creditors and appeals to Arab governments to open embassies in Baghdad likely will be among the issues on the table. What comes out of this meeting may be an important indicator of how Iraq is faring.

In the months ahead, the American political environment may come to influence Iraq events. In their debate last week, Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton vowed to press a timed troop withdrawal no matter what the generals on the ground advised. This is simply bad policy. No matter how much you may hate the war in Iraq and no matter how obstinate the Bush administration policy may have been, the stakes are so high American interests are best served by an open mind and flexibility in charting the U.S. course there.

Americans may be deeply unhappy about the war and think that it was a bad idea from the start, but they don't want to see a Vietnam-like collapse, which led to genocide, chaos and so much misery in Southeast Asia. This time it could happen in a region atop the world's vital reserves of oil.