Throwing Our Weight Around in Iraq

I'm not sure if this is what Biddle (whose plan I won't stop talking about, I know) had in mind as far as exerting leverage on the Shiites goes, but apparently President Bush himself has come out against Prime Minster Ibrahim al-Jaafari for his alliances with those running the Shiite militias responsible for so many killings as of late. It would seem Jaafari is feeling the heat:

Facing growing pressure from the Bush administration for him to step down, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq vigorously asserted his right to stay in office today and warned the Americans against undue interference in Iraq's political process.

Mr. Jaafari also defended his recent political alliance with the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, now the prime minister's most powerful backer, saying in an interview that Mr. Sadr and his thousands-strong militia were a fact of life in Iraq and need to be accepted into mainstream politics.

He is correct in the sense that the militias are a "fact of life", at least at present. And yes they must be "accepted into mainstream politics." However, that does not mean they can be permitted to subvert mainstream politics. Where we erred was in permitting the security forces to absorb whole-sale militias more loyal to their clerics than the Iraq national government, in our desperation to create an Iraqi military that would do battle with the insurgency (which-in case you've forgotten-was done to give Bush the political cover to say things were getting better and reduce our troop commitment.) The consequence of that act is that now we must push back harder against the militias and their leaders than we would have had to if we had merely decreased their influence over time, which appears to have led to the resumption of gun battles with members of the Mahdi army at least.

The Shiite clerics running these militias protest our actions of course. There are probably a few who are ready for us to leave so they can have their way with the government and their Sunni neighbors. Many however are not so ready for us to go, and won't be as long as they know that when we leave full-on civil war with the Sunnis will erupt, and as long as they are unwilling to fight that civil war. We must for as long as possible keep them unwilling to fight that war, so we can maintain our leverage and have some chance of bringing stability back to Iraq.

Unfortunately, it's hard to argue that we're headed in anything but the wrong direction when you read stories like this one:

Sectarian violence has displaced more than 25,000 Iraqis since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine, a U.N.-affiliated agency said Tuesday, and shelters and tent cities are springing up across central and southern Iraq to house homeless Sunni and Shiite families.

The flight is continuing, according to the International Organization for Migration, which works closely with the United Nations and other groups. The result has been a population exchange as Sunni and Shiite families flee mixed communities for the safety of areas where their own sects predominate.

"I definitely wouldn't say the displacement has peaked," said Dana Graber, an official of the migration agency in Amman, Jordan. "It's continuous."

While this isn't on the scale of the "ethnic cleansing" the took place during the Bosnian war, don't think for a second that if Iraq descends into further violence we won't see more of this. Civil war in Iraq would create a migration that would result in the ethnic and political fracturing of the country, in addition to the tens or hundreds of thousands more who would die in any such conflict. It's all well and good to talk about the Iraqis "taking care of themselves" or "standing up as we stand down", but we should know what that really means.