Today’s Must Read

For the Bush administration’s PR push on Iraq, this is the storm before next week’s calm. Next Monday and Tuesday, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testify before Congress on the surge, where they’ll make an argument for continuing the war instead of giving an independent assessment of how the war is going. That’s the relatively favorable part for the White House. But before Petraeus and Crocker arrive in Washington, the administration will have to deal with two less pleasant spectacles: a Government Accountability Office report concluding that the war has met only three of 18 benchmarks for progress; and an independent commission’s finding that the Iraqi police need a radical overhaul.

So how does the administration get past the two reports and seed the bed for Petraeus and Crocker’s testimony? Introduce the concept of “mini-benchmarks” — statistics that support the administration.

Today’s Los Angeles Times points out that the objective of the surge — reducing violence to provide “breathing room” for sectarian reconciliation — has failed. Iraqi politics, as even Michael O’Hanlon concedes, is a shambles, with Sunnis boycotting an increasingly insular Maliki government and a “parliamentary coup” led by Ayad Allawi waiting in the wings. But in the middle of the LAT‘s piece, Crocker is quoted urging people to pay attention to the indicators that truly matter — not the ones where the administration and the war effort fall short.

“There are . . . if you will, mini-benchmarks where things are happening,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Aug. 21. Crocker cited Anbar province, west of Baghdad, where violence has dropped substantially since Sunni Arab leaders there began working with U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

“We’ve seen that phenomenon in different forms move through different parts of the country,” Crocker said. “It’s the steps these tribes, communities, individuals are taking. . . . You’ve got to keep an eye on that too.”

Highlighting the “mini-benchmarks” was the point of President Bush’s visit yesterday to Anbar Province. It’s necessary to draw attention away from the failures of Baghdad in order to convince a restive U.S. public that the sacrifice of U.S. troops is yielding tangible Iraqi political progress. “When you have bottom-up reconciliation like you’re seeing here in Anbar, it’ll begin to translate into central government action,” Bush said. Only two problems: there aren’t any Shiites in Anbar to “reconcile” with; and even if there were, the Iraqi political system — designed by the U.S., of course — doesn’t send provincial representatives to parliament.

Crocker laid the seeds of this “mini-benchmark” argument in July, when he emphasized “bottom-up” political progress and downplayed the Baghdad political contest. All indications over the past few days lead to the conclusion that Crocker and Petraeus will shift the justification for this latest phase of the war from the strategic aim of achieving sectarian reconciliation to the new goal of vanquishing al-Qaeda (and, in the mix, curbing Iranian hegemony). It’s not fooling an anonymous Marine officer quoted in the Times piece, who has to bear the brunt of the effort:

“I don’t know anyone who said, ‘Let’s have an argument on whether 20,000 troops can have an impact on some neighborhoods,’ ” the officer said. “I heard a debate about whether a 20,000-man surge would appreciably enhance the security of the Iraqi people and end the sectarian violence so political reconciliation could occur across the country, not just in Baghdad neighborhoods.

“This is not a military contest,” he said.

The lesson of this next week? Keep your eyes on the prize — that is, the agreed-upon benchmarks for success or failure.