New Course for Iraq
By David Ignatius
Friday, April 23, 2004
If you're in a hole, stop digging. The Bush administration seems at last to have embraced that simple wisdom in its Iraq policy and is beginning to undo some of the earlier mistakes that got the U.S. occupation into such trouble.
The new, new Iraq policy has three basic components. Each reduces the risks of the previous U.S. approach. But the revised plan carries dangers of a different sort, and it's important to understand them up front:
Politically, the administration is tossing the ball to the United Nations and hoping the U.N. (and its still-to-be-chosen team of Iraqi transitional leaders) can catch it after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty. This strategy may bring a calmer Iraq by America's Election Day, but it could have the opposite effect of producing a sectarian power struggle. It's what football enthusiasts like to call a "Hail Mary pass."
Militarily, the administration appears to have backed away from its strategy of "capture or kill" in dealing with the popular uprising that exploded this month among Sunnis in Fallujah and Shiite followers of Moqtada Sadr. An assault on Sadr's militia in Najaf, which would have thrown U.S. troops into an open-ended urban war, now seems less likely. But
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