Meanwhile, Back in Iraq...

Thomas Ricks, author of The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 and Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize), and Stephen Biddle, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, present a review/summation of US prospects in Iraq in The Washington Post (h/t Andrew Sullivan).

Ricks and Biddle seem to think that 2009 will be more difficult than 2008 for the US in Iraq for the following reasons:

1) A series of elections in the country are scheduled and historically these have been followed by unrest, mostly instigated by the electoral losers.

2) Large numbers of US troops will be withdrawn from the country. Things will get "dicey" according to commander Odierno when troops leave more unstable areas.

3) None of the big political questions in Iraq have been resolved (e.g. division of oil revenue). Odierno describes the "surge" as having created the "breathing space" it was designed for but Iraqi factions have backtracked on political progress according to Odierno.

Philip Zelikow makes similar observations looking to the future in Foreign Policy.

1) The big winner is fragmentation with marked recent declines in support for the big losers:

a) SCIRI--the fundamentalist Shia party most closely tied to Iran

b) al Qaeda

c) the Kurds

2) The other big winner is the Sunnis, though they are also quite fragmented.

Zelikow recommends looking for continued fragmentation as local chiefs gain power from the weakening central government in Baghdad. He forsees US influence lessening also, though the Maliki government will be happy to continue to use our forces to try to retain power. He warns of growing danger of civil unrest in the north over the city of Kirkuk, oil revenues and Kurdish-Sunni rivalry.

--Ballard Burgher