Remember Iraq? That war we used to have? Most of us have moved on to the savage melodrama of Afghanistan -- but not U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who just returned from his fourth trip to Baghdad since taking office (and his 17th since the war began, as he reminds anyone within earshot). I was with Biden on his first vice-presidential trip there, also over the July 4th holiday, and news reports from this one sounded eerily familiar -- Biden swearing in new citizens among American troops in one of Saddam's gaudy palaces, exhorting Iraqis to heed the stirring lessons of American democracy and pluralism, and privately playing the go-between among political leaders who can't distinguish between compromise and surrender. My first thought was: This country has all four wheels stuck in the mud. But my second thought was: Yes, but unlike in Afghanistan, it's them, not us, behind the wheel. And that's good for Iraq, and good for the United States.
We talk a lot about leverage in these countries: about where we have it and how we can use it. The United States has about as much leverage in Afghanistan as it can have anywhere, because American soldiers defend the government and American taxpayers fund much of its budget. And yet the laws of physics barely seem to apply when American generals or policymakers try to convert that leverage into the changes they seek. President Hamid Karzai has to show the Afghan people that he stands behind the war effort there -- but he says that he's tempted to join the Taliban. Karzai has to take a stand against corruption -- but he lets his half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, run roughshod over the people of Kandahar, undermining his own legitimacy. All the leverage in the world cannot make Karzai act against his own perceived self-interest.
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