Nearly four months ago, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had embraced a new strategy for Iraq that included specific milestones, or “benchmarks.” What would happen if Iraqis failed to meet the benchmarks? Administration officials hadn’t figured that out yet.
President Bush’s new Iraq policy will establish a series of goals that the Iraqi government will be expected to meet to try to ease sectarian tensions and stabilize the country politically and economically, senior administration officials said Sunday.
Among these “benchmarks” are steps that would draw more Sunnis into the political process, finalize a long-delayed measure on the distribution of oil revenue and ease the government’s policy toward former Baath Party members, the officials said. […]
Without saying what the specific penalties for failing to achieve the goals would be, American officials insisted that they intended to hold the Iraqis to a realistic timetable for action, but the Americans and Iraqis have agreed on many of the objectives before, only to fall considerably short.
“There will be an approach and a strategy that reflects not only the desire for the Iraqis to take more responsibility but the need for the Iraqis to step up,” a senior administration official familiar with the deliberations said. “This is not an open-ended commitment. We are putting real specific requirements and expectations on the Iraqi government.”
Nonsense. By all indications, the administration is drawing a line in the sand, which it’s prepared to redraw over and over again without penalty.
The same thing came up way back in March 2006, when the president suggested he was getting a little impatient with the progress — or lack thereof — in Iraq. He wanted Iraq to know his expectations, but not to hear a word about consequences. He said Iraq needs to “get governing,” but he wouldn’t say what happens if it doesn’t.
I don’t agree with Steven Taylor with much, but his questions this morning were very much in line with my own.
1) Part of the conventional wisdom is that the US has been trying not to appear like occupiers … yet, we are now going to start giving the Iraqi government a public checklist of things to do? […]
2) I’d have to go back and look to confirm my memory, but didn’t John Kerry suggest something like this (i.e., benchmarks) back during the campaign only to have the notion summarily dismissed by the administration?
3) What good is a list of benchmarks if there is no clear penalty for failure? Such a situation smacks of managerial incompetence, like when the boss sends out a memo about a new policy but everyone in the office knows that there is no way for the policy to be enforced. All those kind of things do is make everyone ignore memos and loose respect for the boss.
In this sense, the entire exercise is dubious. It’s like the old joke about the unarmed policeman seeing a criminal and shouting, “Stop! Or I’ll say ‘Stop’ again!” The administration is telling the Iraqis, “Establish a new de-Baathification policy! Or we might ask again sometime soon!”
If the White House wants Iraqi officials to take these benchmarks seriously, they could always say, “Meet the agreed upon milestone or we’re gone.” At this point, isn’t it the only leverage Bush has? And if there’s no threat of consequences for failure, why would the Iraqis care about the benchmarks in the first place?
