The most recent New York Review of Books contains the usual selection of excellent articles. (Regretably, they firewalled a review of Wilfrid Sheed’s new book, so read Garrison Keillor’s NY Times review instead.) But before you dip into the somewhat less depressing fare, be sure to read Peter Galbraith’s “Iraq: The Way to Go“–a sobering resume of the situation in Iraq. The headline may overpromise, however, since the bulk of the essay is taken up with explaining how the situation was allowed to deteriorate and what hope we can have for improvement (precious little). Some excerpts:

Although reliable statistics about Iraq are notoriously hard to come
by, it does appear that the overall civilian death toll in Baghdad has
declined from its pre-surge peak, although it is still at the extremely
high levels of the summer of 2006. Moreover, the number of unidentified
bodies—usually the victims of Shiite death squads—has risen in May and
June to pre-surge levels. How much of the modest decline in civilian
deaths in Baghdad is attributable to the surge is not knowable, nor is
there any way to know if it will last.

The developments in Anbar are more significant. Tribesmen who had
been attacking US troops in support of the insurgency are now taking US
weapons to fight al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists. Unfortunately,
the Sunni fundamentalists are not the only enemy of these new
US-sponsored militias. The Sunni tribes also regard Iraq’s Shiite-led
government as an enemy, and the US appears now to be in the business of
arming both the Sunni and Shiite factions in what has long since become
a civil war.

(…)

Iraq’s government has not met one of the benchmarks, and, with the
exception of the revenue-sharing law, most are unlikely to happen. But
even if they were all enacted, it would not help. Provincial elections
will make Iraq less governable while the process of constitutional
revision could break the country apart.

Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, likes to talk of the
disparity between the Iraqi clock and the US clock, suggesting that
Iraqis believe they have more time to reach agreement than the American
political calendar will tolerate. Crocker is the State Department’s
foremost Iraq hand but, more generally, American impatience often
reflects ignorance. For example, both Congress and the administration
have expressed frustration that the ban on public service by
ex-Baathists has not been relaxed, since this appears to be a
straightforward change, easily accomplished and already promised by
Iraq’s leaders.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC,
previously known as SCIRI), which is Iraq’s leading Shiite party and a
critical component of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s coalition. He is the
sole survivor of eight brothers. During Saddam’s rule Baathists
executed six of them. On August 29, 2003, a suicide bomber, possibly
linked to the Baathists, blew up his last surviving brother, and
predecessor as SCIRI leader, at the shrine of Ali in Najaf. Moqtada
al-Sadr, Hakim’s main rival, comes from Iraq’s other prominent Shiite
religious family. Saddam’s Baath regime murdered his father and two
brothers in 1999. Earlier, in April 1980, the regime had arrested
Moqtada’s father-in-law and the father-in-law’s sister—the Grand
Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr and Bint al-Huda. While the ayatollah watched,
the Baath security men raped and killed his sister. They then set fire
to the ayatollah’s beard before driving nails into his head.
De-Baathification is an intensely personal issue for Iraq’s two most
powerful Shiite political leaders, as it is to hundreds of thousands of
their followers who suffered similar atrocities.

(…)

But even if Iraq’s politicians could agree to the benchmarks, this
wouldn’t end the insurgency or the civil war. Sunni insurgents object
to Iraq being run by Shiite religious parties, which they see as
installed by the Americans, loyal to Iran, and wanting to define Iraq
in a way that excludes the Sunnis. Sunni fundamentalists consider the
Shiites apostates who deserve death, not power. The Shiites believe
that their democratic majority and their historical suffering under the
Baathist dictatorship entitle them to rule. They are not inclined to
compromise with Sunnis, whom they see as their longstanding oppressors,
especially when they believe most Iraqi Sunnis are sympathetic to the
suicide bombers that have killed thousands of ordinary Shiites. The
differences are fundamental and cannot be papered over by sharing oil
revenues, reemploying ex-Baathists, or revising the constitution. The
war is not about those things.

(…)

Lugar’s focus on the achievable runs against main currents of opinion
in a nation increasingly polarized between the growing number who want
to withdraw from Iraq and the die-hard defenders of a failure. We need
to recognize, as Lugar implicitly does, that Iraq no longer exists as a
unified country. In the parts where we can accomplish nothing, we
should withdraw. But there are still three missions that may be
achievable—disrupting al-Qaeda, preserving Kurdistan’s democracy, and
limiting Iran’s increasing domination. These can all be served by a
modest US presence in Kurdistan. We need an Iraq policy with sufficient
nuance to protect American interests.Unfortunately, we probably won’t
get it.