RE: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,180438,00.html

quote:

Meanwhile, in Iraq, an odd combination of events may offer a strategic win-win-win opportunity for all parties: the U.S., the al-Maliki government and al Qaeda. Last week, the Iraqi parliament passed the new status of forces agreement that would keep American troops in Iraq through 2011. Washington regards that as a success, which it is not. What America needs most is to get out of Iraq before the next round in the Iraqi civil war starts.

The status of forces agreement was a nightmare for the incumbant administration, who has tried to put the best possible face on yet another failure/facet of the foreign policy disaster known as the Iraq War.

The part of the "surge" that many attribute so much success to w/r/t restoring peace internally to Iraq didn't have that much to do with adding 30k troops - it had a lot more to do with two other events (which isn't to say it didn't help some):

1. The Iraqi's deciding that they hated Al Queda more than the US, because at least we weren't overtly killing innocents and calling them "involuntary martyrs". Hence, as is typical, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

2. The US started paying the Sunnies and Shia to stop killing each other.

Once the money stops, anything could happen. The wild card is that unlike Afganistan, the Iraqi's actually have a national identity and are a relatively educated society. So they might actually have an (or take the) opportunity to get it together and politically bury the hatchet between the sects (Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia).