Political deadlock brocken in Baghdad

Washington Times:

Politics has broken out in Baghdad.

Long derided as dysfunctional, Iraq's parliament in recent weeks has passed a package of laws on the budget, elections and sectarian reconciliation that have given cautious hope to U.S. officials and private analysts that the gains from President Bush's military surge are finally being matched by a political surge as well.

Daniel Serwer, a specialist on post-conflict societies, recently led a delegation from the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace to Baghdad to assess the political scene and interview the major Iraqi players inside the Green Zone.

"The popular image is that things are completely deadlocked in Baghdad," he said. "That's not what we found at all."

Instead, he said, the delegation found Iraqi politicians cutting deals, making compromises and forming alliances based more on power and votes that on religious or ethnic bonds.

"There's a lot of floundering, a lot of thinking and rethinking, a lot of new voices emerging," he said. "But it's a good deal less polarized than we anticipated."

Mr. Bush and his fiercest critics on Iraq have long agreed that the tactical gains of the U.S. military surge will matter only if they are followed by political gains among the country's feuding ethnic and sectarian camps.

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In a typical comment, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on his campaign Web site faults the military surge in Iraq for failing to produce political change.

"Iraq's leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of the civil war," the senator from Illinois said.

But that Web site may have to be revised.

After passing a law in January easing restrictions on lower-level members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, parliament last month broke a deadlock by passing a trio of bills approving the government's budget, offering amnesty to mostly Sunni political detainees in Iraqi jails and setting a date for provincial government elections.

The three main power blocs in the Iraq government — Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds — all objected to one or another of the three bills, with parties staging regular walkouts to block progress.

But in a maneuver familiar to legislatures around the world, lawmakers bundled the three bills into one and forced a single vote.

"Yes, it moves in fits and starts and it can be very frustrating to watch," Iraq's U.S. Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie said in an interview last week. "But that is normal politics — it looks like nothing is getting done and suddenly everything happens in a flurry."

Mr. Sumaida'ie credited the U.S. military surge for doing exactly what President Bush had hoped, creating the breathing space for political compromise.

"If not for the surge, this kind of deal making could never have been sustained," he said.

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I am afraid that Democrats are not going to let the facts get in the way of their political arguments. But they should now be embarrassed by the fact that the legislature they have derided for its inaction for months is accomplishing more than the Democrat led Congress is in Washington. Unfortunately, Democrats are so desperate for defeat in Iraq they are not willing to acknowledge victory even when it is apparent.