The Dish

Al-Qaeda militants have taken over the Anbar province cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, prompting a campaign by the military to win them back. Ariel Zirulnick explains how the group’s resurgence is linked to the Syrian civil war:

Anbar is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab and the toppling of Saddam Hussein began a process in which their community has felt more and more politically and economically marginalized relative to the country’s majority Shiite Arab community. While that process of disenfranchisement paused briefly towards the end of the US occupation of the country, when a US military strategy of outreach to Sunni Arab tribes with promises of jobs and a seat at the political table paid huge dividends, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has persistently antagonized Sunni Arab politicians and citizens alike since the US military’s departure at the end of 2011.

Many of the Sunni Arabs of Anbar now view Maliki much as they did Iraq’s interim American rulers and with a civil war in Syria raging next door, the local Al Qaeda franchise is finding the wind at its back once more. The Islamic State in Iraq, which incorporated many Syrian jihadi fighters during the battle against US forces, formally merged with Al Qaeda supporters in Syria last year to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also commonly referred to as ISIS) which has become one of the most powerful groups fighting against the Syrian regime. The cross-border movement is far from supported by all in Anbar – its heavy-handed treatment of citizens of towns it controls and contempt for the local culture, tradition and tribal notables saw to that – but the number of people willing to join up, and almost as importantly willing to turn a blind eye rather than informing the authorities about militant movements, has swelled.

Frud Bezhan looks at how the crisis unfolded and what it might portend:

According to Kamran Karadaghi, a London-based Iraqi political commentator and former chief of staff to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, much of the current fighting is a result of the longstanding political crisis in Iraq. ‘The political establishment has failed to reconcile with the Sunnis,’ he says. ‘The Sunnis are almost completely sidelined. The Sunni provinces of Iraq, especially Anbar, were once staunch opponents of federalism but now they want federalism for themselves. That shows you to what extent they’re dissatisfied.’ Tensions spiked in Anbar after Sunni lawmaker Ahmed al-Alwani was arrested in Ramadi on December 28, reportedly on terrorism charges. Days later, on December 30, Iraqi security forces broke up a yearlong sit-in being staged by Sunni protesters who complained of being marginalized by the Shi’ite-led authorities and unfairly targeted by security forces. The crackdown triggered clashes between the military and local tribesmen. The dismantling of the Sunni protest camp also prompted 44 lawmakers, many of them Sunnis, to submit their resignations. Protests against the government first broke out in Sunni areas of western and central Iraq in late 2012 and have continued for more than a year.

The ongoing fighting could have significant implications. Domestically, the violence will deepen tensions between the government and minority Sunnis. Karadaghi believes this could bring Iraq to the brink of civil war and lead to the country’s disintegration along sectarian lines. ‘The violence will only deepen the crisis in Iraq,’ he says. ‘Without a real and genuine reconciliation and political solution, the situation will escalate and become worse and worse. It might turn into a real Sunni-Shi’ite confrontation.’

Looking at these and other recent events, Daniel Byman pronounces 2013 “the year we lost Iraq”:

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has seemingly returned from the dead. On the verge of strategic defeat as U.S. forces departed Iraq, AQI has since regrouped into a large and growing force, contributing to the surge in violence in Iraq and the broader region. Although the neighboring conflict in Syria partially drives AQI’s resurgence, the causes of the group’s comeback are much deeper. Domestically, the weakness of the Iraqi state – and thus the ability of small, violent groups to operate with considerable freedom – has been a persistent problem since the fall of Saddam’s regime. Politically, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made progress in restoring faith in Iraq’s institutions and establishing order in 2008-2009. However, in recent years he has focused on consolidating power and, in so doing, has alienated Iraq’s Sunni Muslim community. Iraqi security services are now more brutal, more political, and less skilled than they were when U.S. forces departed Iraq in 2011. As the Sunnis became marginalized, AQI’s popularity again grew.  Iraq’s neighbors contribute to the problem, sending money and volunteers directly to AQI or indirectly to the organization to support its role in the Syrian conflict. As the violence spreads, it has taken on its own dynamic. Iraqis trust the security services less, and more Sunnis support AQI for revenge or because of a perceived need for self-defense from the Shi’a-dominated security services or associated militias. This in turn leads the regime and the Shi’a community to view the Sunnis with even more suspicion and in their eyes justifies greater regime repression. Unfortunately, none of these problems are abating, and several are getting worse. So AQI’s power is likely to grow.

(Video: Raw footage of fighting in Anbar province from the Associated Press.)

In the new issue of National Affairs, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner re-establish government as a conservative value:

It speaks well of conservatives that they want to be thought of as the defenders of the Constitution. But at a minimum, “constitutional conservatives” should recognize what both the federalist founders and Lincoln actually envisioned for the republic they created and preserved. They were, on the whole, rigorous, empirical, modern thinkers, as well as sober and skeptical heirs of the Enlightenment, who believed they were fortunate to inhabit an age of progress. Far from being constrained by the prevailing physical, political, or economic arrangements of America in 1787, the founders fully expected America to spread across a continent, undergo economic and social change, and emerge as a global actor. And they purposely designed a constitutional system that could accommodate such ambitions.

Of course, this does not answer the question of how big the federal government should be, or what precisely it should and should not do. But it does warn against short-circuiting that discussion with overly simplistic and legalistic appeals to the Constitution as a purely limiting document. Our debates about what government ought to do must be debates about what we take our constitutional order to be and what we think are appropriate national goals. Such questions should be addressed through the political process established by the Constitution; we cannot expect them all to be settled in detail simply through direct interpretation of the Constitution’s text.

What I disliked about the essay was its caricature of Obama’s moderate centrism as over-reaching statist liberalism – but I can see nonetheless why this is a potent rhetorical point to entice some of the more doctrinaire libertarians to take notice. What I liked was its understanding that a conservative movement that sees government – all government – as the enemy is nether conservative nor viable as a vehicle for governance. Coming from a British Tory tradition, of course, my libertarian instincts have always been complemented by a deep belief that government is good, as long as it is not over-stretched, over-spent and devoted to utopian schemes as opposed to pragmatic responses to contingent social, political and economic problems. And these problems will necessarily change from decade to decade, century to century. The trouble with current rigid Republican ideology is that is cannot adjust to this reality. It is an avoidance of thought with respect to grappling with social change in order to sustain a coherent society and polity.

I also requires balance and moderation – two dirty words on the American right. This was a great, Burkean passage:

The proper measure of action is prudence. If Prohibition was a disaster in one direction, so, in the other direction, would be the licensing of methamphetamines and heroin for sale at every convenience store. Responsible, self-governing citizens do not grow wild like blackberries, which is why a conservative political philosophy cannot be reduced to untrammeled libertarianism. Citizens are cultivated by institutions: families, religious communities, neighborhoods, and nations.

And those nations also have histories which affect our current way of life. To deny the legacy of slavery and segregation, for example, simply because they no longer exist, is a terribly unconservative thing to believe. It treats a country’s development as an Etch-A-Sketch.

Conservative government, in other words, should be as strong as it is limited, as pragmatic as it is cautious, as empirical as it is open to a broader conversation with liberals and everyone else. It’s great to see this fundamental truth reasserted by Pete Wehner and Michael Gerson. I just hope someone within the conservative movement will listen. My hopes, sadly, are not very high.