Let's hold peace talks in Baghdad

The war in Iraq needs a second surge. If this war is ever to end, it needs a surge of diplomacy aimed at the Iraqi government.

Gen. David H. Petraeus' military surge is working, but it's meeting only one of its two primary goals: to provide security. The increased security was supposed to give Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the time he needed to establish political stability.

That hasn't happened. Iraq's national government is weaker now than when the military surge began. Maliki's cabinet has all but disintegrated and the Iraqi parliament is as ineffective as the U.S. Congress. The political benchmarks the Iraqis are supposed to meet are shaping up as nothing more than historical footnotes.

This reality falls woefully short of what was hoped for, but it doesn't mean there hasn't been tangible political progress on the ground.

l l l

IN ANBAR PROVINCE, FOR EXAMPLE, Sunni leaders joined with coalition forces and the Shia-dominated Iraqi Security Force to drive out al-Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent forces that, last year, ruled the province with an iron fist.

Similar success is taking hold in Diyala province. When al-Qaeda was routed in Anbar, many terrorists fled to Diyala. Fearful of Taliban-like rule when al-Qaeda in Iraq inhabited Anbar, more than 80 tribal leaders in Diyala -- some of whom have feuded for decades -- signed an American-brokered agreement to defend their province.

These provincial political gains prove Iraqi reconciliation is possible. The trick is to transform local cooperation into national governance. That's why the absence of serious discussion by U.S. policy-makers about a political solution in Iraq is mystifying.

This war can't end until a stable, functioning Iraqi government is in place. It makes no sense for the U.S. to invest lives and capital rebuilding the security and economic infrastructure, but to stand aside while the political foundation crumbles.

Only Democratic Sen. Joe Biden has offered a serious political solution. He supports splitting Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish states. It's a horrible proposal. But at least it's an idea, far superior to the headline-grabbing views offered by some of his colleagues.

l l l

CALLING FOR MALIKI TO STEP DOWN, as Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton did last week, borders on sophomoric. If Maliki takes their advice, or if his administration collapses, who do Levin and Clinton think should take his place? Should new elections be called?

Debating troop withdrawal, as Sen. John Warner attempted last week with his call for a "symbolic" redeployment by the end of the year, is also a waste of time. The Pentagon has made it clear that having 160,000 troops in Iraq can't be supported after the surge ends in April. Logistics, as much as politics, will dictate a serious drawdown of men, women and equipment in 2008.

The only real question left is the size of our Middle East force in 2009 and beyond. The mission and safety of those remaining troops are heavily dependent on the political structure that takes hold in Iraq. That's why it's imperative that the U.S. prepare a diplomatic surge to achieve for our troops and the Iraqi people what their national leaders appear unwilling to achieve for themselves.

Instead of criticizing the Iraqis for a failure of political unity, we should begin to build it by sponsoring talks among national Shia, Kurdish and Sunni leaders.

Spare me the cries about interventionism. The U.S. is constantly urged to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The much-heralded Iraq Study Group was praised for calling on the Bush administration to engage in directs talks with Syria and Iran as part of a regional initiative to stabilize Iraq.

How about having Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice engage in direct talks with the people who have much more insight and much more at stake than the Syrians and Iranians: the Iraqis themselves.

If the U.S. doesn't intercede to stop Iraq's political fall into disarray, the war will truly be lost and Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists will be proven right yet again. When it comes to the politics of war, the U.S. really is a paper tiger.