Explosions are again rocking central Iraq, killing more United States soldiers. The recent violence focuses the world’s attention on the impending U.S. exit from Iraq and highlights the disconnect between political rhetoric and political reality.
These spates of violence sent messages that can be construed as an Iraqi demand for US withdrawal and a return to a pre-invasion sense of national identity and sovereignty. Indeed, this is the message that most of the Iraqis carrying out the attacks feel they are delivering. Likewise, Iraqi leaders, of both formal and informal groups, deliver ringing nationalistic speeches about occupation and American injustice.
Unbeknownst to the people in the street, however, the same Iraqi leaders who are extorting the ills of the American occupation are entreating the Americans to stay longer. In a famous line from the Godfather, Don Corleone remarked that a man with a briefcase can steal more money than 99 men with guns. In Iraq, the question is how much money a man with a briefcase can steal, if he also manipulates the gunmen. Is it possible for men with the briefcases to both encourage, and bargain against, the gunmen? In Iraq, it is not only possible, it is expected for the following reasons.
