Friday, May 11, 2007
The Blog | Art Levine: A Modest Proposal: Benchmarks or Green Zone Eviction | The Huffington Post
How to get the Iraqis to reconcile before we pull out of there.The Blog | Art Levine: A Modest Proposal: Benchmarks or Green Zone Eviction | The Huffington Post Check out my latest semi-ironic suggestion on getting the warring factions to cooperate before we pull out, and some of the responses my ideas prompted. My basic premise:
The President's tentative agreement to include benchmarks in upcoming funding bills -- although he plans to veto the Democrats' latest bill -- still leaves open how the administration plans to enforce key benchmarks that will lead to a genuine political settlement in Iraq among the rival ethnic and religious factions.
While the Bush administration dithers, and experts call for important but hard-to-achieve long-range solutions, I've got a quicker way to get the warring factions to compromise on oil revenues and political power.
My solution? Tell all the legislators and ministers they've got three months to come up with legislative solutions that will stick, or the U.S. won't offer them protection anymore inside the Green Zone. In short, as the clock keeps ticking until a deadline for reconcilliation, U.S. troops should start backing up moving trucks to the Iraqis' protected residences, and we make it clear that until all the key measures are passed, they'll be evicted and forced to return to their own homes in the wilds of the free-fire zone that is the rest of Iraq.
