The problem we face in Iraq is that while the country has made tremendous progress in both the security and political realms, all of those gains are fragile and could evaporate quickly if strained. What Iraq experienced was a lot like shattering the bones in your arm: with time, the bones can heal and the arm can become strong again, but if you take off the cast too soon, then any strain on the arm will cause the bones to fracture all over again.
As scholars of civil war have warned, states like Iraq that have undergone a major inter-communal civil war have a terrifying rate of recidivism—especially if the state has valuable natural resources like diamonds, gold or oil. So to some extent, we and the Iraqis are fighting an uphill battle. There is no reason that we can’t succeed, but it isn’t going to be easy and it isn’t going to happen on its own. And since we can’t know for certain when Iraq’s bones have healed, we need to be very careful about how and when we remove the cast.
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