The White House is framing the two events as commitments kept by the president. But there is little excitement and certainly no bold promises that capping the combat mission in Iraq will prod broader peace in the Middle East.
Tonight, Obama’s emphasis will be to thank the troops and explain why the fight goes on in Afghanistan and beyond — and not so much about the potential for Iraq to be “a beacon of liberty in the Middle East’’ as President George W. Bush put it.
In a narrow sense, the peace talks convened by the White House have little to do with Iraq. The Middle East stalemate has to do with the borders of a potential Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, the security of Israel — and trust on both sides. Making progress on those points, not the Iraq war, is at the core of renewed talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Writ large, however, the fate of Iraq is indeed tied to prospects for peace for its neighbors in the region.
“The more that Iraq emerges as a stable state after the Americans withdraw, the greater the chance for progress in the Middle East, the more it creates a stable environment for the peace process to move forward,’’ said Robert Danin, a specialist on Israeli-Palestinian affairs and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “To the extent that there’s bloodshed and instability in Iraq, that makes it harder for people to focus on peacemaking.’’
Much depends on whether Iraq’s leaders can form a lasting government, whether Iran will seek to exert added influence with a smaller US presence in Iraq, and whether the United States will be perceived as the country that responsibly turned power back to Iraq or the one that left before the job was done.
For now, a presidential speech about the changing of the US mission in Iraq is as close to closure as the people of the United States will get.
