Memo to: Iraq's Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni leaders.
From: An American friend.
Dear Sirs: As someone who really wishes you well, I am writing to give you my best sense of how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is going to affect the U.S. mission in Iraq. Let me begin with an analogy offered by Michael Mandelbaum, author of the forthcoming book "The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century." He points out: "The U.S. military presence in Iraq today is like the dikes and levees that were protecting New Orleans from the flood. The equivalent of the flood for Iraq is a civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The U.S. military right now is holding that back."
Therefore, the key question in Iraq is whether your constitutional process now unfolding can produce a power-sharing accord between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that can be a homegrown, self-sustaining dike against civil war, replacing the Americans. In the wake of Katrina, this is now an urgent question. No, we will not be pulling out tomorrow just because of Katrina, let alone before your December parliamentary elections. But after that, when we will be in a Congressional election year, who knows what pressures may build.
Why? Because most Democrats have opposed the war from the start, and many Republicans no longer support the war per se, but only George Bush. The president has carried this war on his shoulders, and the more he's weakened politically by Katrina, the less he will be able to carry. Yes, Mr. Bush has said we'll do whatever it takes to finish the job in Iraq, but he said that before there was another huge job to do.
Can you imagine if Mr. Bush had to go to Congress this week to ask for yet another $100 billion to keep fixing Iraq, when an entire U.S. city needs rebuilding? And the Katrina TV drama is not going away. Hell hath no fury like journalists with a compelling TV story where they get to be the heroes and the government the fools.
Now, as for your draft constitution, it is at one level a remarkable document - a rare example of the elected citizens of an Arab state having a horizontal dialogue and forging their own social contract. There is already more free politics in Iraq than anywhere else in the Arab world except Lebanon. But this draft constitution will come to life only if Iraqi Sunnis of good will publicly embrace it, and up to now they have not.
Some Sunnis are intimidated, others are posturing for the elections, and some are acting in bad faith, still fantasizing that their Baath Party will come to power again. But Sunnis of good will, and Iraq has many, can be brought around if the constitution creates a politically and economically viable central government, and doesn't pave the way for Kurdish and Shiite separatism, which would leave the Sunnis isolated in central Iraq without power or oil.
As Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University expert on the Shiites, put it: "We need to see a form of federalism in Iraq that is uniting Iraqis, not dividing them - a form of federalism that gives Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds a degree of cultural and religious autonomy without compromising either Iraq's political unity or Baghdad's role as the locus of national politics. The draft constitution is not quite there yet."
I know how justifiably bitter the Shiites and the Kurds of Iraq are over what they have suffered at the hands of murderous Sunni Baathists and jihadist fascists. But it is in their interest and ours to see if we can nurture more Iraqi Sunnis who understand that their best future lies in working with a new Iraq, rather than trying to subvert it. Will Iraqi Sunnis, like the Palestinians, waste a generation trying to reverse history - and destroy themselves and Iraq in the process? Or will they accept the fact that they are a minority that can no longer rule all of a fascist Iraq, but can get its fair share of power and oil in a free Iraq? I don't know.
The only way to find out is to make them an offer they can't refuse. If there is a constitution basically supported by all the key parties, a decent outcome is still possible in Iraq. Yes, Mr. Bush says he intends to stay the course there no matter what, but without a constitution embraced by all three communities, there will be no course to stay. The pressure on us to leave will only grow.
And if the dikes of stability that U.S. soldiers are holding together in Iraq give way, well, you all will envy the people of New Orleans. Most of them had somewhere to go when their floods hit. You and your neighbors will not.
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