Political campaigns are weird in many ways, but especially with regard to the bogus issues they create — and the life-and-death issues they leave off the table. In the past few days, for example, the new Wikileaks files on Iraq have revealed troubling but long-undisclosed archives on the immense number of unreported deaths in Iraq and the extent to which the American military winked at the use of torture by Iraqi authorities. But candidates apparently see no problem.
More generally, evidence of troubling trends in both Iraq and Afghanistan has surfaced that shows Iran’s inroads into the governments of both — and with that, an increasing disregard for, and hostility toward, Washington’s policies. Then there’s the great fatigue that both countries have for the U.S. presence after so many years of war.
In Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki continues to cling to power, but has been unable, or unwilling, to make basic compromises with Sunnis that would allow the Parliament to form a consensus government. In this void, which has existed since the national election in March turned narrowly in favor of the Sunni coalition, Maliki seems to be deliberately reviving Iraq’s haunting sectarian divide.
Sunnis who had quit the insurgency and joined The Awakening — the tribal militias that ultimately suppressed the al-Qaida terrorists largely responsible for fomenting the brutal and divisive sectarian civil war that tore the country apart in 2005-07 — have been cut from the government’s promised payroll and are being arrested and persecuted. More ominously, they have begun drifting back to the insurgency as a result of Maliki’s broken promises to include them in a power-sharing arrangement,
The Maliki government, however, has quit listening to the advice of U.S. commanders with the remaining American garrison. Instead, he is collaborating more closely every day with Iranian advisers from Teheran. The deepening fissures raise legitimate fears of widening Iranian influence and return to sectarian war. Yet congressional and senatorial candidates across America are strangely mute.
They seem oblivious to the fact that Maliki seems intent on easing himself into a dictatorship, or that his path would undermine what little gain the United States might salvage from the needless war in Iraq. Neither do the candidates mention the safety of the 50,000-strong U.S. garrison that is scheduled to be there until the end of 2011.
Much the same is occurring in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai, winner of an openly corrupt election, is now rapidly becoming both a scold of Washington and a brazen collaborator with Iran. He just admitted last weekend that he regularly receives “bags of money” — millions of dollars — from Iran, to go with the billions he and his country have received from Washington, never mind that Iran continues to be a sponsor of anti-American, anti-Israel terrorism across the Middle East.
He, and lately Washington, it seems, are both angling for a compromise with the Taliban for some collaborative form of power-sharing, but they apparently are doing so separately — and amid continuing fighting in many provinces.
In fact, the Obama administration, quietly but rightly, seems to be rewriting the agenda for Afghanistan and looking at least for a partial exit next year. Though it’s well past time for that to happen, it seems remarkable that these events can be occurring without any mention in the current political campaigns.
Presumably, Republicans don’t want to remind Americans that the prior Republican-controlled Congress and White House led the nation into the disastrous but needless war in Iraq when it should have been finishing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan — and had then the opportunity to do so. Now, the United States must devise an exit from both countries with precious little to show for all the tragic deaths and casualties, and the vast and unfinished expense.
There are political lessons to take away from these wars, at least with regard to our reliance on foreign oil and profligate energy use, and the relationships and military power that are required to sustain a country without an energy policy. Yet we now can only wonder what congressional and senate candidates have learned from these lessons.