Inspector Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The situation in Iraq appears much the same: suspiciously quiet. The recent attacks against the foreign and finance ministries attracted little more than a one-day story in the press. Yet, these attacks could be a precursor to more violence, and should give pause to those that believe the job in Iraq is done. Despite progress, there remains a significant number of unresolved grievances such as the status of Kirkuk, distribution of oil revenues, inadequate incorporation of the Sons of Iraq into the security services and, in general, a “winner-take-all” attitude by the Maliki government. Any of these could lead to a reversal on the ground and a renewal of widespread violence.

Others would suggest the opposite. They point to noteworthy reductions in attacks against, and casualties among American forces, the easing of widespread tensions between the Sunni and Shi’a communities, and a general war-weariness which often precedes a long-term reduction in violence.

So which side is right? Is Iraq on the verge of backsliding, or is it moving towards a normal, albeit rocky, political situation which militates for the final departure of U.S. troops in 2011? Will 2010 be the year when it all falls apart or finally comes together? Will Iraq transform itself into a relatively pluralistic nation at peace with itself and its neighbors, and remain an ally of the United States?

On this, the United States cannot sit idly by and allow the situation to determine its own path. U.S. involvement in shaping and achieving an outcome positive to our interests is critical. However, one wonders if this can happen, given the comparatively laissez-faire policy embraced since the elections. I believe the current situation argues for more administration effort, and a return to direct administration involvement in order to ensure a “soft landing” in Iraq. If the goal remains the drawdown of all combat brigades by June 2010 and the complete withdrawal of all troops by the end of 2011, the administration must devote more time and effort to the problem.

The administration in general and President Obama in particular must reinforce a message and reinforce a policy which demonstrates that success in Iraq remains a national priority. The current message seems to be, “we’ve won in Iraq, so let’s move on to Afghanistan” or, dangerously, “we never should have been there, so let’s get out as quickly as possible.” Those who criticized the “forgotten and unresourced war” in Afghanistan and now devote full attention to that effort risk making the same mistake in reverse. Too rapid a shift of focus, resources and priorities from Iraq to Afghanistan, and failure to devote the required time and high-level effort to working through the unfinished business, put the hard-won gains in Iraq in peril. Despite the 2008 election rhetoric, this administration inherited the responsibility for success in Iraq. Pretending it doesn’t exist, bleeding it of needed resources or failing to rally public support for the remaining hard work abrogate the responsibilities that came with the election victory.

While Afghanistan remains an important priority, it cannot be at the expense of Iraq. For a reminder of this, I often turn to an editorial published by Professor Eliot Cohen in 2003. In talking about leaving Iraq prematurely, he noted:

Cut-and-run cannot be disguised, and the price to be paid for it would be appalling. No one else would take on the burdens of Iraq; talk of handing it over to the United Nations or NATO is wishfulness, not strategy. Whatever one’s view of the war’s rationale, conception, planning or conduct, our war it remains, and we had best figure out how to win it.

While there has been tremendous progress since Eliot Cohen wrote this in 2003, there is still work to be done. And we had best figure out how to do it.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Understanding the reasons why Americans are more willing to wage wars than Europeans is of historical interest, but not only. It has been asserted, for example, that Americans were willing to wage war against Saddam Hussein because of the manipulation of the American political system by a lobby that was more loyal to Israel than it was to the United States. It has also been speculated that after the latest Iraq war, the American public will become more like Europeans, and less likely to employ war abroad.

Bob Kagan has argued that Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus. Yes, but why? In my article in The American Interest, “Blood Brothers” (sorry, editor’s choice), I discuss how the large immigration to British North America from the English-Scotch border area, and the subsequent endemic and brutal warfare against the North American Indians, created a political culture in the United States in which failures to respond violently to challenges were seen as the mark of weakness that would lead to predation against the weakling, and in which willingness to fight was part of the duties of a citizen. We are a warlike people. We fought in Iraq because we rise, violently, to violent challenges, and we will remain a warlike people for the foreseeable future.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

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On June 4, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a much-anticipated address to the world’s Muslims, from a podium at Cairo University. (If you cannot see the embedded video above, click here. The text is here.) The following MESH members responded to an invitation to comment on the speech: Alan Dowty, Michele Dunne, Chuck Freilich, Bernard Heykal, Bruce Jentelson, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Mark T. Kimmitt, Martin Kramer, Walter Laqueur, Michael Mandelbaum, Michael Reynolds, Michael Rubin, Harvey Sicherman, Philip Carl Salzman, Raymond Tanter, and Michael Young.

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Michele Dunne :: What President Obama had going for him in this speech was at least the appearance of frankness, laying on the table the areas of difference—terrorism (repackaged as “violent extremism”), Afghanistan, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear proliferation, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, economic development—and giving his view of each one. That approach, along with the requisite expressions of support for Islam as a religion and a civilization, will get him some points.

What the speech did not do was tell us anything much about how his administration will follow up on these issues. The list of deliverables was exceedingly short. The only firm promise was to a pursue a two-state solution to the Palestine issue—which will be extremely difficult to achieve. There were hints of a softer approach to Hamas (now it’s an organization with “support” and “responsibilities” instead of a terrorist group) and perhaps to Hezbollah (”we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments”), but it was unclear how serious that was and whether it would be sustainable in Washington.

If Obama considered “terrorism” a toxic word to be discarded, at least he did not do the same with “democracy.” He stayed on the plane of theory but addressed the issue squarely, not ducking its political aspects, and this was the part of the address that got the most positive reaction from the Egyptian audience. It was the only part of the speech where he actually lectured a bit, issuing a series of “you musts” when it came to what “government of the people and by the people” meant. Frankly it was more than I expected. It was a good start to articulate principles for which the United States stands, but then again, there was no promise of follow-up. What, if anything, will the Obama administration do when the Egyptian government excludes most of the opposition from the next parliamentary elections or when Syria throws a bunch of democracy activists in jail? Obama told us nothing about that. Privately, administration people are saying that Bush promised much on democracy and delivered little, and that Obama plans to do the reverse. Let’s see. We won’t have long to wait.

The women’s rights and economic development sections near the end had a cut-and-paste feel. These are Secretary Clinton’s pet issues, and apparently she is inclined to try to substitute them for democracy and human rights overall in policy and assistance programs. At least that didn’t happen in this speech. But the smallish economic and women’s rights initiatives mentioned created a sort of imbalance. It would have been better either to have Obama say what he was going to do in each of the major areas of the speech or none of them, perhaps saving the microloans for announcement in a fact sheet.

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Bernard Haykel :: I am writing from Riyadh where President Obama was cordially received but has left a bitter aftertaste among many here. His visit is seen as an attempt to get, not to say bully, the Saudi leadership to make concrete and positive gestures toward Israel, over and above the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. Saudis have little desire or willingness to do this because of a widely held view that Israel, especially under its present Likud leadership and after the brutal war in Gaza earlier this year, does not deserve this. A number of Saudis have asked the following question: Why should the Kingdom reward an Israeli leadership that is not even willing to acknowledge the Palestinians’ right to a state? Granting something additional now to Israel for nothing can only help make the Saudi leadership look weak-kneed.

As for Obama’s speech in Cairo, all the Saudis I have spoken to have acknowledged its rhetorical power, but they insist that only facts will make a difference to their assessment of the President’s true intentions.

My own view is that the speech was remarkable for its relative candor on a number of important issues (and for some notable omissions), but I am troubled by its framing which juxtaposes the United States and Islam as two equivalent entities, which they are not. In doing this, Obama has adopted unwittingly the framing of Al Qaeda’s ideology, and this in turn might grant a degree of legitimacy to discussing Islam as a political reality rather than a faith. Surely, it is certain forms of Islamism and not Islam that pose the problem.

The second notable point in the speech is Obama’s analogy between the plight of Palestinians and that of African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow. The context here is Obama’s advice to Palestinians to adopt non-violent means in resisting Israeli occupation. As before, Obama has taken a page from Al Qaeda’s book, in which the alleged humiliation and oppression of Muslims are compared to the tribulations of African-Americans. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s number two leader, often invokes this same history by drawing on the examples of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to argue that only violence and rejection can lead to political change, and to convince African-American soldiers to desert the U.S. armed forces.

In short, the framing of the United States’ relationship with the Muslim world as one based on friendship rather than enmity, while superficially and rhetorically laudable, is fraught with difficulties and pitfalls, not least because it can unwittingly give credence to the idea that there might in fact be a clash between the United States and Islam. I can imagine a long-bearded man now smiling in a cave on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

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Josef Joffe :: The problem laid out by President Obama in Cairo is an old one in America’s international relations. It is foreign policy as psychotherapy. The diplomatist/strategist deals with conflicts of interest and the “correlation of forces,” as our Soviet friends used to say. The therapist knows no such clashes, certainly no tragedies—only misunderstandings, fears, and neuroses. Obama-in-Cairo was Esalen-amidst-the-Pyramids. Or as he himself put it: “This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.” It is an imaginary conflict, in other words.

There are several issues here. The first is that the therapist does not speak truth but reassurance. Obama recounts how Morocco was the first to recognize the United States in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1796. Unfortunately, the larger, though unmentioned, truth is less reassuring: that the first wars America fought after independence were with the “Barbary Pirates,” the potentates of the Maghreb. To break their nasty habit of selling American hostages for money, the young republic fought intermittently from 1801 to 1815. No misunderstandings here, just the naked clash of our interests against theirs.

A larger untruth is the (implicit) idea that America is at war with Islam, as uttered in the e contrario phrase: “America is not—and never will be—at war with Islam.” Of course not. Who ever said so? Only Al Qaeda et al. did—copiously and tirelessly. These folks also keep saying as insistently that they are at war with the “Jews and crusaders,” with the West, and above all, America. Before the President reached Cairo, AQ’s No. 2, Aymal al-Zawahiri, let it be known that Obama’s speech would not at all change the “bloody messages” he was sending to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Therapists make no judgments on truth and falsehood; for them, the process is the purpose. But a process that does not correctly unearth the roots of conflict will invariably run afoul of the realities. Islamist terror will not go away because Obama softly, softly establishes a kind of moral equivalence between the Holocaust and what Palestinians call the Nakba, their loss and flight in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

Nor will the Arab world flock to America’s cause because of all the niceties Obama has bestowed on it. Let it be said, though, that the harsh rhetoric on Israel plus slaps like no-state-dinner for Mr. Netanyahu at the White House have been replaced by the balanced cadences of the Cairo speech: The Israelis have to do this, the Palestinians and Arabs have to do that.

But the chickens have already come home to roost. The hope, a perennial one, obviously is that the Arabs will be so overjoyed by the U.S. manhandling Israel that they will rally to Old Glory en masse, doing America’s bidding throughout the Greater Middle East. This is not how the Mideast works. To make the point, the spokesman of the Egyptian foreign ministry told the New York Times: “We will judge everything by the degree of Israeli commitments, and measures that are taken.”

In so many words: “Mr. President, now that you have pressured the Israelis, we want to see more of it. And more. And then, perhaps, we’ll do you a favor on other matters.” We are back at the oldest game of the Middle East. It is called “Let the U.S. Deliver Israel, Then We Might Start Acting in Our Own Interest.” Obviously, if it were in the Arab interest to push the Palestinians toward peace, and to engage in an alliance of containment and deterrence against Iran, they would have done so. But for lots of reasons, good and bad, the Arabs are not interested. And so the United States will keep weakening its only true ally in the Middle East without reaping any geopolitical fruit from its courtship of Araby.

Alas, a lot of damage will have been done before the United States learns that therapy is not grand strategy and changes course. But one bit of therapeutic advice remains apropos: Never treat your opponents and detractors better than your friends.

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Mark N. Katz :: President Obama gave a powerful speech in Cairo setting forth his vision of how the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world can be improved. In it, he called for change both in how the United States and its allies view and act toward the Muslim world. But he also called for change in how the Muslim world views and acts toward America and its allies.

Early on in the speech, he pledged “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” In the very next sentence, though, he insisted that, “the same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America.”

His remarks about how the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq began and about Guantanamo were obviously critical of Bush administration policies. His saying that, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements… It is time for these settlements to stop,” is an unmistakable call for change in Israeli policy. At the same time, however, Obama made clear that America’s bonds with Israel are “unbreakable.”

And in one of the most important passages of the speech, Obama called for a change in Palestinian behavior toward Israel. “Palestinians must abandon violence,” he stated bluntly. He noted that black people had suffered in America, but that, “it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.” He noted that non-violent resistance had overcome oppression elsewhere too. Non-violent resistance, he implied, would help the Palestinians achieve their goal of an independent state while violent resistance would not.

Later, Obama called for improved Iranian-American relations, but made clear that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.

Regarding the democratization of the Muslim world, Obama stated that this was not something that “can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” On the other hand, he made clear that America wants to see progress toward democracy in the Muslim world, and that this is in the interests of Muslim governments since “governments that protect…rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure.”

Those in the Muslim world who do not want to cooperate with the United States will find—indeed, have already found—reasons to dismiss Obama’s speech. Osama bin Laden dismissed it even before Obama gave it. However, those in the Muslim world who did not like American foreign policy in the past but would like to cooperate with America in the future can find in Obama’s speech an American president who acknowledges their concerns and is willing to work with them.

Obama’s Cairo speech represents a good faith effort to improve America’s relations with the Muslim world. If this does not occur, it will not be for lack of trying on Obama’s part.

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Mark T. Kimmitt :: OK. The long-anticipated “major speech to the Muslim world” is over, and it is being parsed for messages, inferences, policy directions and reactions. The “let me tell you what the President should say next week” crowd is reviewing the text to see if their recommendations were embraced, rejected or reversed. The analysts and pundits on Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and a thousand broadsheets in the region are assessing it to see how it aligns with editorial policy. The President is moving on, rhetorically and physically, to the next key administration challenge, be it North Korea, the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, General Motors, Afghanistan-Pakistan or a host of other high-priority national security issues.

As for the speech, all the right messages were sent out. America is not at war with Islam, we have common interests in fighting violent extremism, Palestine is a problem, a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat, and democracy is a form of human rights. So, let’s push the reset button. Good, practical sound bites that reaffirm U.S. policy and increase our appeal on the street, but there was little in the way of tangible new initiatives or promises of outcomes. Perhaps it was too much to expect, but the speech seemed more of a conversation rather than a commitment.

It’s fine to have a conversation. Perhaps it’s helpful to tell the Muslim world that we will get out of Afghanistan when the job is done, and get out of Iraq by 2012 regardless. Helpful to note that the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. Important to clarify that Iran should have nuclear power, but not nuclear weapons. But what is the administration going to do about this? The only tangible “we shalls” in the speech were easy and low-hanging fruit on education, science and technology, economic development and fighting violent extremists. No specific “we shalls” on Iran, on Palestine, on Gaza, on Syria. Only aspirations and “we seek.” Fine speech, but what’s next?

Was this a speech to guide U.S. policy or enhance U.S. popularity? Will the speech prove to be the catalyst for reform, for moderation, for diplomatic breakthrough or simply words to calm the street? If nothing else, the speech has built up expectations, and expectations are that the United States wants to reset the relationship—and that there will be tangible results from that new relationship. The Muslim world will be looking for outcomes, for a change to the status quo, for breakthroughs in long-standing grievances. The speech raised expectations and the street is looking for results.

Among the billion or so who listened carefully to a well-crafted speech, many are sitting in taxis, sipping coffee in cafes, praying in mosques and arguing in universities. Many if not all of them are applauding the speech and many (if not all) are asking the same question: what’s next?

So, congratulations on a great speech, well-written and well-delivered. It is certain to change more than a few minds about American intentions. But good words and good intentions have a rapidly depreciating value, and will make things worse if these words turn out to be false promises. Time will tell.

It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.

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Martin Kramer :: “Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect more than the Mamluks God, His Prophet, and the Quran.” So spoke Bonaparte when he arrived in Egypt, in a proclamation of July 2, 1798. Substitute “Islam” for Egypt, “we Americans” for I, and “violent extremists” for the Mamluks, and you’ve got the core message of President Obama’s speech.

It’s a very old drill in the annals of “public diplomacy.” Supplementary gestures help. Obama was careful to pronounce the word Quran with the guttural qaf of the Arabic. (Too bad, though, he botched the word hijab.) Unless you’re converting, you can’t say Ich bin ein Muslim, so you come as close as you can. (Barack Hussein Obama—can we finally use his middle name now?—gets closer than most.) Some Muslims are wise to this, and so presumably they will discount it. But the great majority? Who doesn’t love pandering?

I leave it to others to parse the sparse policy pointers in the speech. (Rob Satloff does a nice job of it.) Some of the influences on Obama bubble to the surface. There is the Third Worldism: Muslims are victims of our colonialism (Obama has read Fanon) and the Cold War (has he been reading Khalidi again?) The primacy of the West is over: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” There is the implicit comparison of the Palestinians to black Americans during segregation, a familiar trope (Carter and Condi went for it too). Israel comes across as an anomaly. There is no appreciation of Israel as a strategic asset—its ties to the United States are “cultural and historical,” and thus not entirely rational. (That validates Obama’s other former Chicago colleague, Mearsheimer.) All of this has the ring of conviction—and of a Third Worldist sensibility.

Maybe the most disconcerting line is this one: “We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism.” The pretense? This discrediting of liberalism and its universal humanism is the classic stance of the Third Worldist radical. And did you know that the job description of the nation’s leader now includes “my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear”? Perhaps it’s possible to disband CAIR. America now has a president who knows “what Islam is, [and] what it isn’t,” and who even has a mandate to insist on closing “the divisions between Sunni and Shia.” Perhaps an emissary should be sent from Washington to the pertinent muftis and mullahs: the mission would certainly be more congenial than closing divisions of General Motors.

Indeed, not since Bonaparte has a foreigner landed on Egyptian soil and delivered a message of such overbearing hubris. Were I a Muslim, this 6,000-word manifesto would have me worried stiff. This man wants to be my president as much as he is America’s.

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Walter Laqueur :: An excellent speech. Even before it was delivered, Wikipedia included it its list of the greatest speeches ever, a list beginning with the Pericles funeral oration. If a religion has 1.3 billion followers, it was only natural that the emphasis had to be on a new beginning, on mutual interest and mutual trust, on partnership, on peace, on not being prisoners of the past, on breaking the cycle of suspicion, on Muslims having enriched America, on doing away with crude stereotypes, on diplomacy and international consensus, on all of us sharing common aspirations, on listening and learning from each other, on Andalus, algebra and on the 1,200 mosques in America, on all of us being the children of Abraham, on “any world order that elevates one people over another will inevitably fail,” on education and innovation being the currency of the 21st century.

How much of this is genuinely believed? How candid can one (should one) be? I am sure that when the Prince of Wales said a few years ago that the Muslim critique of materialism helped him to rediscover sacred Islamic spirituality, he had never even heard about taqiya and kitman. I do not know the answer to the question; perhaps it was a mixture of the two.

Dissimulation may not be an admirable practice, but it could save lives. I recommend Macaulay’s 1850 essay on Machiavelli, a strong believer in Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare which, freely translated, means that he who does not know to dissimulate has no business to be in politics.

What of the impact of the speech? An unfair question: soft power, however desirable, has its limits. Pericles’ funeral oration did not lead to the resurrection of the dead and there is still much sin in the world despite the Sermon on the Mount.

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Michael Mandelbaum :: President Obama’s Cairo speech continues two venerable traditions of American public life. One arises from the electoral politics of foreign policy. It is customary for the presidential candidate of the out-party to promise more skillful conduct of the country’s relations with the rest of the world, either by adopting different positions—as with candidate Barack Obama’s promise to end American participation in the Iraq war—or by doing better in pursuit of a goal on which all agree.

During the Cold War the standard version of this second tactic was the charge that the incumbent had, through crass insensitivity, botched relations with America’s European allies, which the challenger promised to repair with more adept diplomacy. America’s relations with Muslims served this electoral purpose in the 2008 presidential election, with the challenger promising to improve them by dint not so much of his policies as of his identity. The purpose of the Cairo speech was presumably to deliver on that promise.

Unfortunately, it will not do so. Muslims’ attitudes to the United States will depend on Obama’s policies—that is, on what he does—not on who his father was. Whatever the uses of identity politics within the United States, there is no good reason to suppose that they have any significant effect beyond the country’s borders. As Anne Mandelbaum has observed, Dwight Eisenhower’s German background did not win him approval among Germans during the years, from 1942 to 1945, when he had extensive dealings with them. Nor is it clear why people in Muslim-majority countries should be favorably impressed with the fact that the United States has a president one of whose parents shared their faith. They live, after all, in countries governed, for the most part, by men who by that standard qualify as twice as Islamic as Obama, and whose performances in office have been, to put it generously, unimpressive.

The second political tradition that the speech continues is the perennial overconfidence of all presidents of the United States in the power of their own oratory. Such overconfidence is not surprising. In the United States an individual becomes the most powerful person in the world through his speeches. It is one of the glories of the American political system that a presidential election is, in part, a debating contest. Foreign policy, however, is not. Here again, what is relevant is the fact that what Obama does will shape Muslims’ (and others’) opinion of him and his country, while what he says will not. His impact on Muslims and the countries in which they live will therefore come from the policies affecting them that he devises after words fail him.

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Michael Rubin :: Obama is a gifted orator, one in a generation. By nature of Obama’s background—and the fact that he is not George W. Bush—he has a real chance to change the tone of discussion in the Middle East and among Islamic states. That said, rhetoric isn’t enough. Policy matters. Here, there is cause for concern. The Obama doctrine appears to rest on twin pillars: One is a decision to dispense with demands for accountability, and the second seems to be moral equivalency or cultural relativism.

Both Bush and Obama spoke of Palestine and their desire to see the creation of a state for Palestinian Arabs to live beside Israel. But Bush conditioned U.S. support for Palestine’s independence on a cessation of terrorism. Obama does not. And while he certainly condemned “violence” (perhaps terrorism is too loaded a term for Obama), he implied equivalence between this and the dislocation felt by some Palestinian Arabs.

Obama also cast aside demands for accountability when discussing elections, declaring “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.” This appears to be an allusion to the lack of U.S. support for the Hamas-led government in Gaza. The United States should be under no obligation, however, to befriend or assist governments which run counter to its interests. After all, U.S. foreign aid is not an entitlement. Hamas scrapped—and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt demands the scrapping of—agreements to which their entity and state have already obligated themselves. We should hold them accountable, not say we will embrace everyone.

As for cultural equivalency, I must object to his statement: “Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” Time and time again, however, it has been the superpower status of the United States which has prevented a far worse world order from taking root, be it in Europe, Asia, or even Latin America. The United States is not equal to Libya, nor should it ever be.

The cultural equivalency also permeated Obama’s discussion of democracy. Backtracking away from democratization as a pillar of policy, Obama said: “No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people.” But there are certain norms of good governance. On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, for example, we should not say, “Oh, well: That’s just the way Chinese democracy works.”

Let’s hope for the best but, absent a clear articulation of what the United States stands for and what our vision is, rhetoric will not be enough to make a better, more secure world or build a solid foundation for U.S. relations with Muslim-majority states.

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Harvey Sicherman :: President Obama’s Cairo speech was Wilsonian. The lofty moral tone, keen detachment (all claims treated equally), and leap-of-faith rhetoric are all there. So is the religious overlay. And as befits the shorter attention span of the 21st century, Obama proposes to remake the world in seven points instead of fourteen, in 55 minutes instead of Wilson’s 99-plus.

As president of a secular democracy, Obama’s choice of location (Mubarak’s Egypt) and audience (a “world” identified only by religion) offered minefields aplenty. He negotiated most of these with admirable dexterity but not always. One paragraph invoked “a partnership between America and Islam,” and then declared that “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” This was a bit much. Probably, as Theodore Roosevelt once said about a Wilsonian elocution, “as a matter of fact, the words mean nothing whatsoever.”

Some of the other words do mean something. Obama vigorously asserted the dignity of America’s civil religion, especially freedom of speech, religion, democracy, and women’s rights. He refuted dangerous nonsense about 9/11 and the Holocaust; explained policy in Iraq and Afghanistan; and justified the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Coming from Saudi Arabia the day before, he instructed the Arab oil producers not to rely on “what comes out of the ground,” and instead educate their people. Good luck!

Obama’s “no sticks in sight” approach to Iran, including his apology on the Mossadegh affair (Madeleine Albright did this in 1998) was all open hand to which the Iranians thus far have responded with the middle finger. But the President’s framework ought to alarm the Israelis: will a U.S.-Iranian “dialogue” produce a demand that Israel yield its nuclear weapons in exchange for international guarantees that Iran, under international supervision, will not build one?

Obama, as he told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman before the speech, wanted to “speak directly” to the Arab street and persuade them of America’s “straightforward manner. Then at the margins, both they and their leadership are more inclined and able to work with us.” But this is more than a margin call. Obama has straightforwardly distanced himself from Israel, the better to cultivate the Arab coalition, whose leaders are his real target. Can they deliver the Palestinians to a compromise acceptable to Israel? Can they do much to alter the Iranian course? Or is the Arab coalition’s influence, like that of the Arab street, or the world of Islam, only a shadow of its reputation? A historian might say of the Cairo speech that it was a triumph—of hope over experience.

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Philip Carl Salzman :: President Obama uses his bully pulpit in Cairo to urge his vision to the people of the Middle East. That vision is one of commonality based on common traditions and common humanity. The driving force that would motivate this commonality is teleological: a desire for progress. We all want the same things, he argues and urges: peace, prosperity, dignity, education, family, community. If we only look ahead, we shall get along with one another, and go along the path of progress. This is a remarkable post-postmodern rebirth of the 19th-century concept of progress.

But the President does not address the people of the Middle East, but instead addresses Muslims. In doing so, he validates the argument by Islamists that Islam should be the primary identity of the people of the Middle East, and implicitly validates the vision of a new Caliphate. And in focusing on Islam, he must over-communicate virtues and commonalities, and under-communicate problems and differences. Islam, he tells us, is a religion of “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” He goes on to say that “throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

This seems to me rather a whitewash of a dark history. Why, it’s déjà Bush, all over again: Islam is the religion of peace. Indeed, he argues that “one rule… lies at the heart of every religion—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” I suppose we should not be surprised that these formulations are geared to generate positive sentiments, rather than to summarize our knowledge of actual Islamic history, theology, or law.

Several times the President urges listeners to stop looking backward, to leave past grievances aside: “If we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward.” This is a difficult message for Muslims, given their understanding that the golden age of Islam was under Muhammad, who should for all eternity be the model for every believer. Islam under Muhammad is the life to be emulated. A good Muslim always looks back.

The specifics are mixed. The President is strong on “unbreakable” bonds with Israel, and that “Palestinians must abandon violence.” Definite on favoring two states. Strong on condemning Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, but in the abstract only. Strong on democracy generally speaking. Strong denouncing Iran’s bomb. Weak on Palestinians still in camps in Arab countries. Very mild on women’s rights. Ambiguous on Jerusalem. Wishes a nuclear-free world, but no special emphasis on a nuclear-free Middle East.

Shall the good intentions of the President pave the path to progress?

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Raymond Tanter :: President Obama’s Cairo speech was replete with soaring rhetoric designed to reach out to Muslims around the globe, and particularly those in the Arab world. The President remarked that now is “a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but added:

We have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek. A world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God’s children are respected.

The President can certainly talk the talk regarding outreach to Muslims, but will he walk the walk that the Muslim street wishes to see?

Doing so would require a number of U.S. policy changes to appease the Muslim street, such as pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions, expanding engagement with Syria without preconditions, accepting an Iranian regime with a uranium enrichment capability, withdrawing forces more quickly from Iraq, halting drone attacks of Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan, and reversing U.S. escalation in Afghanistan.

President Obama was careful to signal that such unrealistic policies would not be forthcoming. He indicated an evenhanded policy on the Arab-Israeli dispute, reaffirmed his commitment to keep Iran from getting the bomb, held to his Iraq timetable, and justified escalation in Afghanistan.

The President’s indications that no major policy reversals would occur clashed with his eloquent rhetoric about a “new beginning” between Muslims and non-Muslims. Without any dramatic policy changes, President Obama’s speech is likely to unfairly raise expectations in the Muslim world, leading to inevitable disappointment.

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Michael Young :: President Obama’s homily in Cairo had much that was interesting in it and much that was vague. That’s the nature of these communications, but several things suggested that Obama wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

In referring to the war in Iraq, the President remarked:

Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.

Indeed. But if Iraqis are better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, what does that tell us about U.S. policy when it comes to supporting democracy and human rights in the Middle East? After all, neither diplomacy nor an international consensus would have ever freed Iraqis from under Saddam’s thumb. So did the United States do the right thing in getting rid of the Baath regime by force? Obama didn’t address this prickly question.

That fuzziness, however, permeated his later discussion of democracy in the region. Obama pointed out: “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” But then he went on to say that this did not lessen his commitment to governments that reflect the will of the people. Except that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

But hadn’t Obama just presumed to know that the Iraq war was ultimately beneficial for the Iraqi people, since he felt that they were better off without Saddam? And weren’t they better off without Saddam because the new system they are living under was imposed on them? And weren’t Obama’s bromides in favor of democracy and democratization not also statements implying that he presumed to know what was best for everyone?

If so, then why did he not just come out and state the obvious: that democracy, openness and pluralism are indeed better for all states, as is respect for human rights. Why did Obama prefer to avoid rocking the boat when it came to autocratic regimes in the region? Not a word was uttered on actual cases of human rights abuses, whether in Egypt, which was hosting him, or in any other part of the Middle East. Clearly, the realist aversion to involving the United States in the domestic policy of the region’s states was on display.

Finally, I was interested in what Obama had to say about the Maronites and the Copts, given my weakness for minorities in the region: “Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld—whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.”

Yet this advice Obama placed under the rubric of “religious freedom.” Odd, because the problem of minorities in the Middle East is usually more political than religious. What the Copts would like more of is political power, not the freedom to exercise their religion. As for the Maronites, their sense of decline is attached not to the fact that they cannot practice their religion, which they can do without any objection from their Muslim compatriots, but that they feel political power is escaping them.

What do these issues have in common? They lead me to a disconcerting conclusion that Obama has no coherent view of political freedom in the Middle East. He tended to overemphasize religion, while underemphasizing how the United States might address political matters, such as what to do about dictatorial regimes, the major cause of the great trauma he described, namely 9/11; or how to reverse the absence of democracy in the Middle East, in illegitimate states that fail to fulfill the aspirations of their citizens; or what to do about minorities denied political power, Muslim and non-Muslim.

Obama submerged his speech in the holy water of religion, but it is freedom, the failure of the Arab state, and the lack of accountability of regional regimes that are far more central to the dilemmas the Middle East face today. In one word, it is mostly about politics, and on this Obama was too busy being polite to his listeners to raise the difficult questions he promised to raise.

Go to the comments for more from Alan Dowty, Chuck Freilich, Bruce Jentleson, and Michael Reynolds.

A spike in violence against Iraqi civilians reinforces pressure on President Obama to maintain a force level that would allow for the maintenance of security during the drawdown.

President Obama announced a troop drawdown strategy from Iraq in February 2009, based on responsible removal of U.S. combat brigades. After removal of combat brigades, the U.S. mission is to change from combat to supporting the Government of Iraq (GOI) as it takes the lead in providing security. The United States, however, is to draw down from the approximately 142,000 troops in Iraq as of March 2009 and retain a transitional force of some 35,000-50,000 troops to train, equip, and advise Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), so long as they remain non-sectarian; conduct targeted counterterrorism missions; and protect American civilian and military operations within Iraq.

President Obama chose a 19-month phase-out over an option of 23 months or his campaign pledge of a 16-month drawdown, which he based on withdrawing one combat brigade per month when there were 16 U.S. combat brigades in Iraq.

In connection with the presidential goal of removal of U.S. combat brigades, field research in Iraq during October 2008 offers new insights, published in my 2009 book, President Obama and Iraq: Toward a Responsible Troop Drawdown. Interviews with Iraqis across the political spectrum reinforce the President’s decision to slow the pace of the drawdown, and suggest consideration of an even slower timetable. Political gains of the U.S. military surge and the Sons of Iraq (SOI) program, which took away about 100,000 Sunni Iraqi fighters from attacking coalition forces—a political surge—would be jeopardized with a 19-month drawdown.

Regarding reconsideration of withdrawal timetables, it is instructive to compare the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Quarterly Reports to gauge security progress. The April 2008 SIGIR report stated:

Progress on the security front this quarter was significant but uneven. No new provinces were transferred to Iraqi Security Forces control, but the overall level of violence was substantially lower as a result of the [U.S. military] surge.

Compare this 2008 assessment with the more negative April 2009 SIGIR report, in the aftermath of the transfer of security responsibilities to the ISF for the entire country:

Although average attack levels are at post-invasion lows, recent upticks in violence in Baghdad, Diyala, and Ninewa provinces exemplify the fragility of the current security situation. Notably, bombs in Baghdad and Diyala reportedly killed more than 75 people on April 23, 2009, marking the highest one-day civilian casualty total in more than a year. Some of the recent attacks arose from arrests by Iraqi (Shia) police of (Sunni) Sons of Iraq leadership. These violent eruptions underscore the need to ensure that SOI personnel are re-integrated into new positions within the Iraqi system, pursuant to the GOI’s agreement to do so.

President Obama stated in April 2009 that he has “a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence.” But with the takeover of management of the American-sponsored SOI program by the GOI, it has not incorporated these Sunnis fighters into the ISF in the proportions anticipated. As of April 2009, only some 5,000 SOIs had been inducted into the ISF out of a planned 20,000 former fighters. And in late March, firefights broke out between SOI and ISF in Baghdad.

Indeed, American officers continue to be skeptical of the Government of Iraq’s potential to integrate Sunni Sons of Iraq. Failure to do so jeopardizes the ability of the ISF to maintain stability, and it may be necessary to slow the U.S. troop drawdown further until the ISF makes progress integrating the SOI.

One particular group of civilians the United States is obligated to protect is comprised of approximately 3,500 Iranian dissidents with “protected persons” status under the Fourth Geneva Convention. My interviews with SOI tribal chiefs in Iraq provide conclusive evidence that these Iranian dissidents in Iraq helped form and expand the SOI. Accordingly, the tribal chiefs stated that they perceive their own security to be linked to the safety of the Iranian dissidents in Iraq.

The American military has protected these approximately 3,500 Iranian dissidents, housed in a compound in Ashraf, Iraq, since they voluntarily relinquished their arms in exchange for such protection in 2004. And despite the Status of Forces Agreement of January 2009, the U.S. obligation to continue such protection remains so long as the American military is present and combat operations are ongoing, or at a minimum, to monitor ISF operations around Ashraf.

At issue is whether the pace of the American troop drawdown is consistent with the requirements of continued protection of the Iranian dissidents, especially in view of their ability to counter efforts of the Iranian regime to subvert Iraq. These dissidents have provided valuable intelligence regarding Iranian regime infiltration of Iraq and operate as a political counter to Tehran’s pressure on Baghdad. The dissidents have also acted as an interlocutor between Sunnis with influence over the insurgency on one hand, and the U.S. military on the other hand, helping to peel Sunnis away from the insurgency and encouraging their peaceful participation within the Iraqi political system.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

For those who follow Iraq closely, one of the more anticipated government documents is the quarterly “9010″ report. This report, colloquially named after the requirement established in section 9010 of the 2006-2008 DOD appropriations acts, has been produced quarterly since July 2005 and serves as a historical record for operations conducted over 90-day periods in Iraq. (All past issues are available here.)

The 9010 report maintains data and graphs that go back years, often to the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Trends are graphically portrayed across a wide spectrum of areas ranging from the number of security incidents to the “hours of power” delivered to each province. Accompanied by fifty or so pages of text, the report is comprehensively focused to provide “the details behind the numbers.” It leans heavily towards the security aspects of the mission, complimented by stability and reconstruction statistics, while its Department of State counterpart (the “1227″ report), reverses the emphasis by focusing on non-security and stabilization aspects.

MESH proposed this post to me, based on my previous Iraq-related commentary and former position in DOD which involved responsibility for producing the 9010 reports in 2007 and 2008. With an interest in brevity, a quick examination of the graphs and selected commentary in the latest report provides room for optimism, but tempers that optimism by acknowledging that it’s far too soon to declare success. Much has been accomplished, but much work—and risk—remain. (Click on any graph or map to enlarge.)

Five sets of graphs from the report illustrate this point: Overall security trends and fatalities (pp. 19-24); handover/transition of responsibility to the Iraqis (p. 31); economic progress (pp. 13, 14, 15); delivery of services (p. 16); and public perceptions (pp. 28, 29).

Within the security graphs, one is struck by the reduction in violence in Iraq. Violent incidents and attacks are down as are fatalities. U.S. military, ISF, civilian, and even ethno-sectarian fatalities have plummeted. The reduction is dramatic: at the height of the violence in 2006 and 2007, there were well over 1,500 incidents weekly, which included attacks against Iraqi infrastructure and government organizations, IEDs, mines, grenades, sniper attacks, ambushes, and other small arms attacks such as mortar, rocket and surface-to-air missiles. Tragically, those incidents were accompanied by fatalities and these are displayed in graphs on pages 20, 21 and 23. For example, in the period May-July 2007, the ISF was losing nearly 275 soldiers per month and the United States was losing between 75 and 100 soldiers per month. Civilian fatalities in late 2006 numbered in the thousands and most of those were attributed to ethno-sectarian violence. This is in depressingly stark contrast to the halcyon days of early 2004, where a 300-incident week was normal, fewer than 20 U.S. troops lost their lives each month, and records for civilians and ISF fatalities were so small they did not exist.

While 2004 to 2006 saw a significant increase in violence, the decrease in violence over the next two years is equally dramatic. From numerical highs in 2007, the precipitous drop in all categories of violence is encouraging, but should be viewed with concern. Violence is not an end in itself (except for the nihilist) but a consequence of environmental conditions. Steady and consistent improvement in conditions is needed to institutionalize stability in Iraq and the efforts of the Iraqis and the United States is central to those improvements.

The next sets of graphs illustrate this point. One of the most important conditions leading to long term stability is economic progress, and in Iraq that means oil. Despite efforts to diversify the Iraqi economy, the country depends on the oil industry for the majority of government revenue and follow on private economic activity. The significance of oil production to economic progress is central, and is brought out in graphs on pages 13, 14 and 15.

Unfortunately, the graphs demonstrate near-flat production rates of 2.0 to 2.5 million barrels per day for the past few years, and the recent fall in oil prices has taken its toll. The lack of production growth coupled with the return of sub-$50 per barrel oil prices places significant pressure on government budgets and government services. The notes to the report highlight an improvement in infrastructure repairs, an increase in technical service contracts and the beginning of the long-awaited Southern Export Redundancy Project, all of which will improve consistency and quantities of oil production and could double (at least) oil output in years to come. The challenge, however, is whether that improvement in output and the realization of increased oil prices will be soon enough in the future so that the rising expectations of the Iraqi people are correspondingly met by a rising standard of living. If not, diminished expectations and standards of living could be a catalyst for renewed tension and corresponding violence.

Rising expectations are reflected in many ways, not the least in an expectation of employment opportunities and basic services. Our troops and diplomats know that one should never underestimate the importance of steady employment, clean water, dependable electricity, clean streets and safe kids. Existential debates regarding the optimal balance of power sharing between provincial and federal authorities may rage in the coffee houses, but rarely at home.

One measure in the 9010—electricity supply and hours of power per province—illustrates this point. While delivery of electricity is improving, it has not grown as fast as the expectations of the Iraqi people. These expectations are manifest in the comment, “Only 18% of Iraqis are somewhat or very satisfied by the amount of electricity they receive, down from 34% who felt satisfied in November of 2007.” Yet, during this same period the average citizen received more hours of electricity, more reliably, every day. Despite this, the average citizen feels shortchanged by the Iraqi government’s inability to deliver the goods. One wonders if the recent increase in violence can be traced to these and other similar perceptions as to the effectiveness of the Iraqi government.

The text in the report indicates similar trends in access to clean water, sewage disposal, and healthcare, and there is little to suggest that outside research would not find similar findings in other areas such as education and local governance. The report is candid about this challenge and notes: “The provision of essential services remains a key component of national reconciliation and a significant factor in building popular support for the GoI.” There is probably no better way to articulate this challenge, and demonstrates why these statistics remain so important to monitor.

Nonetheless, the citizens of Iraq appear optimistic about the current situation and the future. Perhaps it is because of the challenges of 2006 and 2007, perhaps it is a cultural norm, but despite rising (and generally unfulfilled) expectations, they remain upbeat on the future. Few doubt the improvement measured in security trends translates directly to improvements in perceptions shown in the graphs on page 28. The most striking observation is not the belief that neighborhoods are very safe (they can see that with their own eyes), but the belief that travel outside of their province is generally safe. While the second measure has much room to improve, the graph (or a similar measure) was consistently red (no travel is safe outside of my province) in earlier iterations of the 9010 report. This bodes well for a belief in a unified and national Iraq.

The second set of graphs is less sanguine: perceptions on government security efforts and overall stability. Here, the slides are far improved over previous years and reflect a measure of optimism that was absent in earlier polls. Nonetheless, as a referendum on the government, the numbers are not a rousing endorsement. This should be tempered by our own American experience: government officials and government rarely earn high numbers from the American population.

Nonetheless, the general sense one takes away from the graphs and the accompanying text is that the Iraqis feel better about their individual circumstances than any time in recent years. They remain fairly optimistic about the future, they have a higher regard for the military and police, but they still expect more from the government. Their patience is not everlasting and the Iraqi government, quite simply, needs to pick up its game. Time is not on its side and one can only hope that the referendum on the government will play out in the voting booth and not on the streets.

And here lies the rub. As President Obama has stated, it’s time for the Iraqis to make the hard choices and control their own destiny. The President is right, but one wonders about the timing. As shown in the 9010 report, much has been done in a short while, but there is much more to do. The report acknowledges this conundrum in the Executive Summary:

Despite the continued progress, these gains remain fragile and uneven throughout the country, and their durability has not been seriously tested. Iraq remains fragile, primarily because the underlying sources of instability have yet to be resolved—the nation’s major power brokers do not share a unified national vision, they disagree on the nature of the state, and they are reluctant to share power and resources. As security has improved, underlying political disputes have risen to the forefront, and political tension remains a problem.

The Iraqi government, its security forces and its own people should take great pride in the accomplishments outlined in this report. The Iraqis do need to control their destiny and they should be given as much responsibility as they can handle as quickly as they can handle it. That said, the success of the enterprise is in no small measure due to the blood and treasure provided by the American people, and that blood and treasure will be needed in 2009, in 2010, in 2011 and beyond to institutionalize that success. Perhaps our support need not be in the same amount or in the same mix as prior years, but we will need to support the Iraq enterprise for years to come. The latest 9010 report illustrates this point in detail. While it may give one pride in what has been accomplished, it also provides a clear-eyed appreciation of what remains to be done.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Following on Scott Carpenter’s excellent post on the state of the Iraqi elections, it is also worthwhile to consider the security situation in Iraq. A year ago, I asked if 2008 would be

the year when the gains in security are met by gains in stability, or will the tremendous tactical gains achieved by our troops be withered away because of a lack of political consensus and the lack of political reconciliation? (Will those) gains in security translate into gains in stability? The next phase (of the Surge) will be far more difficult as it depends more on the Iraqis themselves to show progress on key legislation, show progress in their economy and to show progress in reconciliation.

As 2008 demonstrated, there were tremendous gains in internal security, and the recent elections demonstrate that there is a flicker of hope for political consensus and reconciliation. The economy is in good shape and in many ways the envy of the region, despite the low price of oil. Regional governments, while not embracing Maliki, at least are no longer rejecting “that Iranian in Baghdad.” Overall, both the political and security situations are far better than one might have hoped in early 2007 when the “Surge” decision was announced. As a wag recently noted, the ultimate metric of success—the fact that the war in Iraq rarely merits front page news—has been achieved.

However, the situation still remains tenuous and there is no reason for complacency or casual dismissal of the challenges. As I did in early 2008, let me offer a checklist of leading indicators for 2009.

1. Keep an eye on potential flashpoints: Kirkuk, the pace of integration of the Sons of Iraq into Iraqi Security Forces, and post-election violence as results are announced.
2. Keep an eye on Iran, Syria, Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups. How will they see 2009? An opportunity to step into a perceived vacuum created by the departing U.S. forces? An opportunity to create mischief for the new U.S. administration? An opportunity to interfere in the wake of the recent Iraqi elections?
3. What will be the effect of a 16-month withdrawal policy for the U.S. combat brigades? As this will require the return of a brigade per month, will this lead to a security vacuum in those regions now covered?
4. Will the U.S. administration adhere to a 16-month schedule, or will there be some flexibility in this timeline?
5. Will the Iraqi government stick to the requirement for all U.S. forces to be out of the country by the end of 2011? Will there be provisions made for trainers, enablers, CT forces and the protection of U.S. facilities?
6. Are the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) ready to take over the responsibility in each of those brigade areas? While the ISF have proven willing and able to handle the direct fire engagements, they have been dependent to a great degree on U.S. intelligence, air support, logistics, fire support and communications. Is the ISF ready to fight a full-spectrum counterinsurgency on its own?
7. What will be the operational consequences of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)? Will insurgents and extremists attempt to leverage perceived restrictions on U.S. forces to increase their activities?
8. What will be the commercial consequences of the Status of Forces agreement on contractor organizations? Will contractors—which now number well over 100,000 and handle much of the logistical and commercial activities—depart en masse given the transfer of legal jurisdiction from the parent country to the Iraqi judicial system and the departure of large numbers of U.S. forces?
9. Is the Iraqi Government ready to take responsibility for the large number of detainees that the SOFA hands over to them? Will the pressures of local politics demand the release of large numbers of detainees? How will the Iraqi government treat those detainees it retains? Will they cure or create the next generation of insurgents?
10. Will the downturn in oil prices have an effect on the budgets of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Intelligence? It was hoped that the Iraqi budget would include $12 billion for the ISF, and that these funds would pay for salaries, operations and procurement. Will the procurement budgets remain sufficient to buy the equipment necessary to pick up where the U.S. forces have left?

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