Moment Of Truth in Iraq

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Why are we siding with the Sunnis now?
It is a little startling that the Sunnis, whom the U.S. tossed from power in 2003, are being showcased by Washington as its favorite new allies. Bush and Petraeus have trumpeted the fact that Sunni insurgents in western Iraq who were once allied with al-Qaeda against the U.S. have joined forces with the Americans against the terrorists. These new alliances were in part the result of luck. Al-Qaeda violently overplayed its hand and started randomly killing Sunnis who refused to ally themselves with the terrorist organization. And in some places, America won the Sunnis over the old-fashioned way: by paying them. The question is how widely the Anbar model can be applied elsewhere. It is easy to forget that Anbar is the one part of Iraq that is largely Sunni and thus doesn't suffer from the same kind of civil strife that upends order in other parts of the country. And if Anbar was truly secure and ready for a handover, Bush might be able to pull out the more than 20,000 Marines stationed in the province and send them elsewhere. In reality, no one thinks that is possible.

That's because there are unmistakable risks to the new Sunni alliance. Arming the Sunnis against al-Qaeda is fine, but if they tire of their alliance with Washington, they become just another faction armed with U.S. weapons. Shi'ites and Kurds worry that the Sunni tribesmen who are fighting alongside American troops now have little or no loyalty to the Iraqi government and would just as soon turn their guns on Iraqi forces as on al-Qaeda. In addition, strengthening a Sunni stronghold in the middle of the country goes a ways toward cementing the very partitioning of Iraq that the Bush team has long sought to avoid. Which means the U.S. has to reckon with its new Sunni allies on roughly the same terms that lobbyists calculate the tenuous support of Senators they don't really trust: the question isn't whether you can buy the Sunnis; it's whether they will stay bought. "These people used to be America's problem, so America has bought their friendship," says the Iraqi analyst. "When the Americans leave, these people will become Iraq's problem."

What happens now in Congress?
Less than many might expect. Democrats have been trying a variety of approaches since January: setting timetables, limiting deployments or easing troop-deployment schedules. Despite or maybe because of the consistent and vocal demands of the party's antiwar flank, none of the Democratic efforts have yet attracted lasting bipartisan support. The few that have come close fall well short of veto-proof margins. The best proposals, like the plan developed by Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island that would begin withdrawals by 120 days after passage, mustered only 52 votes, not enough to overcome a filibuster or override a veto.

For now, Bush holds the high cards. Even if Democrats were able to peel off a dozen or more Republicans in the Senate and adopt a measure requiring a deployment on a specific timetable — and that's a big if — the vast majority of House Republicans are unlikely ever to break ranks and support such a plan. So Bush has little to fear from the Democrats, for all their promises to change course on the war. And there's a bonus in this for the President as well: if a close vote makes it to the floor of the Senate, Bush can allow most of the moderate Republican Senators who are up for re-election next year — Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Gordon Smith of Oregon — to vote with the Democrats. That would permit endangered Republicans to strike an independent pose with voters and still enable Bush to sustain a veto in the House.

That doesn't mean the Democrats will stop trying. A faction of Democrats has sought to make some kind of vote on the Iraq war a regular occurrence, simply to force Republicans to go on the record as supporting Bush. It is likely that some of the votes that take place this fall will be as much about the future of Congress as about the future of Iraq. There are a dozen Republicans in both houses who are in very tight races next year. A vote for the status quo, Democrats believe, is priceless advertising fodder in the coming election.