Benchmarking the Iraq war

Careful reading of report shows patience required

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The Bush administration's report to Congress on the status of the Iraq war on balance should give Americans encouragement -- if they'd bother to read the document themselves instead of just listening to the back-and-forth rhetoric.

Instead, before President Bush's critics even had time to skim it, they, like our Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, were taking potshots that were too simple-minded to deal with here. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in truly ridiculous fashion, didn't wait until the end of Bush's news conference last week before concluding that the president's "policy has failed." No doubt, editorials and commentaries -- with only superficial examination of the report -- will repeat the same the policy-has-failed line.

But it hasn't -- at least not as badly as the harshest critics would have it -- as any fair, careful reading of the report would show. Don't bother e-mailing me that only Bush the Evil Idiot and Bush lickspittles would say such a thing; let's look at the 18 assessments of the war made by the report.

Many news accounts said that "only" eight benchmarks recorded satisfactory progress, implying that the other 10 were failures. I don't know how someone came up with the number, but the way I read it is: eight successes, four mixed, one "progress but not enough" and five unsatisfactory to varying degrees.

Satisfactory progress has been made on: forming a constitutional review committee and completing the review; moving ahead with legislation to form semiautonomous regions in Iraq; establishing political, media, economic and service groups to support increased Baghdad security; providing three trained-and-ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations; establishing all of the planned joint-security stations in Baghdad neighborhoods; protecting the rights of minority political parties in the Iraq legislature; and allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.

Significantly, the report said Iraq has made satisfactory progress in ensuring that Baghdad doesn't become a safe haven for, in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's words, "outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation." As a result, the discovery of weapons caches there has tripled since last year because of "an erosion of insurgent safe havens."

The report gave a mixed review on establishing new election law procedure and reducing the level of sectarian violence. Benchmarks for granting a general amnesty and disarming sectarian militias could not be rated either way because the "right conditions are not currently present" for their accomplishment.

In what I would place in a separate "not-satisfactory-now, but-progress-is-being-made" category is making Iraq Security Forces evenhanded in its enforcement actions. The report noted "significant progress," but its "overall judgment" was unsatisfactory because "we are holding the ISF to a high standard." As they should.

That leaves five "unsatisfactory" ratings in areas of: de-Baathification (reconciliation) reform; equitable distribution of oil supplies; insulating military commanders from political influence; increasing the number of ISFs to operate independently; and ensuring that political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against ISF members. It's not as if nothing was happening. While rating progress on these benchmarks as unsatisfactory, the report said that no revisions to current plans or strategies are required to achieve some of these benchmarks because progress is being made.

Obviously, this is the Bush administration's view of things, and while events change daily, the report is, in its own words, reflective of "trend data" and "trajectory." Many Americans see only U.S. casualty figures as a measure of the war's success or failure -- and that's certainly a legitimate measure -- but it's also important to have a longer view. That longer view says some things are working, and some things need to have time to work, raising the question: If a policy appears to be working, or soon will be, how rational is it to abandon that policy?

Clearly, the report ought to give pause for more thoughtful examination by knee-jerks like Obama and Durbin. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) had it right: "There is nothing in this report that should justify anyone who's not already made up their minds that they want to retreat from Iraq to vote to mandate a retreat from Iraq. The report is too mixed. There's too much on the line in Iraq."

Instead, we get the monumentally irresponsible Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) thoughtlessly intoning: "It would be immoral to wait until September to change a failed policy." To the contrary, abandoning that policy now in the face of progress would be immoral.