Iraq's election day went off remarkably well. Despite some scattered and tragic violence, there was nothing like the kind of devastating violence threatened by a few insurgent groups and only scattered reports of problems in the electoral process. The de-Baathification shenanigans of Chalabi and al-Lami did some long-lasting damage to the credibility of state institutions and the rule of law, but not enough to cripple the elections. The relatively calm election day was overseen, it's worth emphasizing, by Iraqi security forces and not by U.S. troops -- something which I was often informed, over the last year, couldn't possibly happen. It did. This is simply excellent news, and a credit to the emerging capability of the Iraqi state. So now that election day is past, what now?

Read on

Welcome to the Middle East Channel! 

Some of you may have wondered why I haven't been posting much lately.  Part of the reason is that I've been working hard on putting together the Middle East Channel at ForeignPolicy.com.  Creating this site has been my dream for a long time.  With today's launch, it's finally come true, after half a year of hard work, with the enthusiastic support of the leadership at Foreign Policy  and a vibrant partnership with Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah's Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.  It's also sponsored by the Project on Middle East Political Science, a new network of political scientists specializing in the Middle East which I have been putting together with the support of a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation -- much more on that soon! 

I can't think of a better way to explain what we're trying to than to quote in full the "Welcome" post which we've put up to announce the Middle East Channel:

The world is hardly lacking for opinions about the Middle East. But quantity should not be mistaken for quality: Too much of the public debate about the issues of the Middle East is dominated by partisan bickering and poorly informed punditry.

Foreign Policy's Middle East Channel is something different: a vibrant and decidedly non-partisan new site where real expertise and experience take priority over shouting, where the daily debate is informed by dispassionate analysis and original reporting all too often lacking from the stale and talking-point-laden commentary that sadly dominates most coverage of the region today. Its contributors range from academics to former policymakers, from journalists on the ground to established analysts -- with an emphasis on introducing voices from Middle East itself. Most importantly, the Middle East Channel comes to you doctrine-free, open to political viewpoints of all kinds -- but demanding honesty, civility, and genuine expertise.

Our scope is broad: Israel and its neighbors, Iran's nuclear program and domestic politics, Iraq, Islamist movements, the Gulf, Turkey, and North Africa, and the struggle for reform and democracy. The Middle East Channel will highlight links between issues and areas of this diverse region of 400 million -- as well as provide a unique perspective on America's challenges there. We'll have regular interviews with Middle East and Washington players, sharp commentary on the news of the day, and original analysis of new ideas and trends in the region.

The Middle East Channel is edited by Marc Lynch of George Washington University and the Project on Middle East Political Science and Amjad Atallah and Daniel Levy, co-directors of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation. Lynch, who writes the Abu Aardvark Middle East blog on ForeignPolicy.com, is an expert on Arab media and politics and is the author most recently of Voices of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today. Atallah is an expert in the law of conflict and post-conflict situations and a former advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team. Levy was an advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and is a leading commentator on Israeli politics and Middle East peace.

You can follow the site on Twitter, sign up for our RSS feed, and subscribe to our twice-weekly email updates to get the latest on what's happening on the Middle East Channel and beyond.

I'll still be blogging here under my own name, while co-directing and co-editing the Middle East Channel.  Feel free to send me your ideas for stories or feedback.   Here we go!  

This afternoon at the Elliott School of International Affairs I moderated a really interesting panel on war reporting, co-sponsored by my Institute for Middle East Studies, Sean Aday's Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications, and Jim Lebovic's Security Policy Forum. The panel featured three major American print war journalists: Michael Gordon (of the New York Times) and Ann Scott Tyson and Rajiv Chandrasekaran (of the Washington Post). What emerged was a fascinating picture of strengths and weaknesses, of what war reporters could and could not accomplish --- especially the difficult of getting unfiltered access to local Afghan or Iraqi voices. And the panel brought out some thought-provoking points about how significantly Afghanistan differs from Iraq for the press corps... and not for the better.

There was a fairly sharp, and productive, divergence in the presentations of Gordon, on the one hand, and Tyson and Chandrasekaran on the other, about the ability of the media to cover Iraq, Afghanistan, and other such war zones. Gordon mounted a strong defense of the performance of the media in Iraq, arguing that it was the press which first noticed and drew attention to the chaos following the fall of Saddam and to the improvements following the "surge." He showed a striking slideshow of images from combat, and talked of his many embeds across Iraq as offering direct and systematic access to both the American and Iraqi sides of the conflict. All three journalists pointed to how much could be learned through embeds, from the body language and frank evaluations of the junior officers and soldiers and from the moods on the streets and bases -- and all had poignant vignettes demonstrating what a sensitive and determined journalist could do with such access.

At the same time, the Washington Post reporters both offered more guarded evaluations of what the press had been able to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran described a brief "golden age" after the fall of Saddam when journalists could get out into all parts of Iraq fairly freely, but as the violence mounted and journalists were targeted in the struggle access to many parts of Iraq or to many Iraqis became much more difficult. For years, journalists (even those not living in the Green Zone) were forced either to huddle down in offices and rely on stringers, or else go out into the field with the military as embeds. Both routes offered useful perspectives, but neither is perfect.

Tyson and Chandrasekaran were both frank about the limitations of trying to speak to Iraqis or Afghans from within a military embed (hopping out of a military vehicle and surrounded by large men with guns is not always the best way to strike up a conversation -- through a translator -- with locals). The U.S. military's decision to shift to a population-centric COIN strategy created more and better opportunities for such contacts, intriguingly. Both mentioned the great value of stringers, Iraqis who could get out into their communities, and who help constitute an effective overall team. Such use of stringers is essential but raises its own problems, of course - including, not least, their own safety. I pointed out my dismay at the number of books about Iraq written by even very good journalists which fail to quote or take heed of Iraqis themselves. Anthony Shadid was brought up several times as an exception, but what makes Shadid exceptional is that he is, in fact, exceptional in this regard both in terms of his Arabic language and his access (ditto Nir Rosen and a few others).

Both also acknowledged the reality of the Defense Department's control of access to embeds and of crucial information (a point Gordon disputed). Tyson mentioned at least one instance where she was not allowed to travel to a location in Iraq because it would have been a "bad news story", and the frustration of trying to get accurate and useful data from the military. Meanwhile, as I pointed out, the Pentagon's own media strategy must be taken into account -- the marketing of "good news" stories, the selection of embeds, the provision of the "right" shaykhs or former insurgents with a message to send, and so on.

Chandrasekaran -- just back from covering the Marja campaign -- noted some significant differences between Iraq and Afghanistan for war reporters. In Iraq, he argued, Baghdad was a central hub where a lot of the meaningful politics happened, while in Afghanistan Kabul is just a bubble and tells you virtually nothing about what's going on elsewhere. The infrastructure of stringers is far less developed in Afghanistan, curtailing that stream of vital information for reporters trying to make sense of the full range of voices and viewpoints. Tyson also pointed out differences in treatment of reporters by the British and other commands compared to the U.S. command. Both expressed concerns about journalists bringing their Iraq experiences and lessons learned to an Afghan context where they may not apply.

As usually happens when journalists come together, talk turned to the financial crisis of the press today and the resource constraints which this imposes. Both the Times and the Post have continued to devote significant resources to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even increasing the latter. But there's a lot fewer other papers able to do so, and to this point no clearly viable new media business model to fill the gap. Tyson pointed out how the Iraq focus had sucked attention away from Afghanistan for the crucial years of 2005-2008, a gap which the media was only now beginning to fill -- tellingly, following rather than leading the White House's decision about where to focus.

Finally, Gordon complained of the "lag time" between Washington-based analysts and reporters on the ground, and hit out against bloggers, pundits, politicians, and other analysts who weren't there on the ground. This struck me as something of a red herring -- war reporters and policy analysts do different things, have access to different streams of information, have different needs and make different contributions. Embedding with the military offers an unparalleled worms eye view, but it's only one part of a complex picture, and such experiences are only one of the multiple streams of information and context needed by serious analysis. One point which didn't come up in the discussion but perhaps should have is the significant difference in what can be learned between long-term war correspondents, present in the field for months and months and able to get out into the field and really learn their turf, and the "war tourists" coming in for a week's embed or a CODEL-style set of briefings and trip through a marketplace tour to be able to say they've "been in Iraq/Afghanistan." Those differences would make for a fascinating follow-on panel discussion -- which someone else should organize!

So you thought that Ahmed Chalabi and Ali al-Lami's Accountability and Justice (De-Ba'athification) Committee had done all they could to wreck Iraq's elections and advance their political agendas?  Not even.  Yesterday, in what al-Hayat calls a surprise move, Lami announced that the AJC had named 376 military, police and intelligence officers for de-Ba'athification. The list includes a number of important people in senior positions.

The political calculations here are transparent.  Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has the Constitutional right to except individuals from de-Ba'athification in the national interest, but presumably he won't out of fear of being portrayed as "soft on the Ba'ath" in the last days of the election campaign.   Lami's move will likely further inflame the situation, demonstrating the degradation and politicization of Iraqi state institutions and further antagonizing many Sunnis (Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said today that the Iraqi government had "failed" at national reconciliation, though a return of civil war remains unlikely, while Ayad Allawi is on the defensive over his visit to Saudi Arabia to launch his election campaign).   That polarization will strengthen the electoral hand of the more sectarian parties, including of course the one for which Lami is personally a candidate. 

The impact of this new move hasn't yet really begun to play out, but it will.   If you don't know, now you know. 

Rashad Hussain's appointment as the Obama administration's  envoy to the Organization of Islamic Countries, part of the broader strategy of outreach to the Muslim world, was as welcome as it was overdue.  Hussain, a lawyer who had been working in the White House counsel's office and also working with the NSC on Muslim engagement, seemed an excellent pick.   The announcement in Doha showed a renewed sense of urgency about delivering on the promise of Obama's Cairo speech to the Muslim world. It is good to see a Muslim appointed to such a position.  After the failed Christmas bombing most would agree that the task of combatting violent extremism is as urgent a national security priority as ever.  

But then, an all-too-familiar script began to play out.  A paper-thin but insinuation-heavy hit piece laid out the template for a rapidly unfolding smear campaign: damning him by association for appearances at various events sponsored by Muslim organizations, for being on the "wrong" side of a number of controversial trials of Muslims (as if there were only one legitimate perspective on those hotly contested issues), and of allegedly doctoring the record of comments about Sami al-Arian (see Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's detailed, rigorous analysis of the textual evidence which decisively debunks the charge).   The hit piece was quickly picked up by the noise machine and disseminated through a range of right wing blogs and websites, migrating seamlessly to Fox News and Politico, and becoming the fodder for another manufactured scandal of the day. Within days, it has become standard to describe Hussain as a "terrorist sympathizer"... and the hate is flowing.  It is no less despicable for being so commonplace. 

One irony is that Hussain is actually one of those Muslims who has been speaking out against extremism, forcefully and eloquently, and whose role in Muslim engagement was explicitly focused on building alliances with Muslims around the world to marginalize al-Qaeda.  In a Brookings paper published in 2008, Hussain wrote that "[T]he terrorist ideology is advocated by small, fringe groups and rejected by a vast majority of Muslims . . . as American policymakers and leaders have recognized, Islam rejects terrorism." He argued that "there exists a near-unanimous, overwhelmingly accepted view among Islamic scholars rejecting terrorism and the practice of takfir to justify terrorism."  He went on to argue that "If the global coalition to stop Al-Qaeda and other terrorists groups is to succeed, it must convince potential terrorists that Islam requires them to reject terrorism." Indeed, he argued, "The most paramount task for the global counterterrorism coalition is to emphasize that engaging in terrorism is antithetical to the shari’ah, or Islamic law."   This is not a close call.

That a Muslim who has written so powerfully against extremism and terrorism is nevertheless so casually tarred as a terrorist sympathizer is shameful.   It is also strategically dangerous. Those serious about counter-terrorism and combatting violent extremism now mostly understand that such campaigns also have the potential to deal a sharp blow against U.S. efforts to combat violent extremism and to counter al-Qaeda's narrative.  It threatens to offer ammunition to al-Qaeda's claim that the U.S. is at war with Islam, not with "extremism", and to sabotage Obama's efforts to establish a new narrative.  Hussain's critics know perfectly well that he's not a terrorist and doesn't support terrorism, and probably understand that their campaign against him will have a negative impact on the Muslim community in America and beyond.  Evidently they don't care.  

Fortunately, the story doesn't end there.  The bright spot in this sordid affair has been the willingness of a few national security experts on the hawkish side of the spectrum to stand up in public and denounce the railroading of Hussain. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote a powerful personal defense of Hussein as primarily motivated by civil liberties concerns, not by Islamism.  He took that defense on TV, where he had to face the wild-eyed insanity of Frank Gaffney (apparently, memorizing the Quran is evidence of extremism) and to confont head-on the madness of the anti-Islamic post-9/11 fringe.  Some other conservative national security experts rose to Gartenstein-Ross's defense -- I'll single out Max Boot and Eli Lake, though they certainly aren't the only ones.  For others, well, welcome to the Islamofascist stealth jihad, ya Daveed. 

The response of these national security conservatives has been heartening.  There's more and more understanding of the importance of disaggregating the challenge, placing al-Qaeda and the jihadist movement as a dangerous but tiny fringe movement rather than lumping together all Islamists or Muslims.  Pushing back against this campaign is important just as it was essential to not over-react after Fort Hood or the Christmas bombing.    So is the response of the White House, which has stood fast against the smears rather than folding at the first sign of an attack.  Hopefully both national-security conservatives and the White House will continue to do so.  If sensible people stand up against these contemptible smears, it could send a powerful message that the days of such intimidation and smear campaigns are past.  Let's hope. 

Apologies for being away for a week -- been working on a number of projects which have taken me away. I'm back, courtesy of a Washington Post piece this morning  U.S. contingency planning for the period following the Iraqi election (disclosure: I'm quoted).  The headline here is that General Odierno is planning contingencies for slowing down U.S. drawdown plans, but I don't actually think that's much of a story.  Of course he is -- it would be irresponsible to not plan for contingencies. But I've seen little indication that the Obama administration, or for that matter Gen. Odierno, has been anything but committed to the drawdown from Iraq. That commitment has been clear, and that's all the the good.

There's been a mini-boom of late in commentary urging Obama to delay his timeline for drawing down U.S. forces, or at least to "do more" --  the Kagans are shocked, shocked to discover that Iranians are influential in Iraq, Jackson Diehl just wants Obama to care more about Iraq (without any hint of what policies might follow). They should be ignored. The administration is handling Iraq calmly, maturely, and patiently,  has demonstrated in word and deed its commitment to its drawdown policy, and has tried hard to thread a devilish needle of trying to shape events without triggering an extremely potent Iraqi backlash. It is possible, if not likely, that there could be slippage on the August deadline of getting to 50,000 troops, mainly because the elections slipped all the way to March. That's one of the reasons I always was skeptical of pegging the drawdown to the elections, but that ship has long since sailed. But the SOFA target of December 2011 for a full U.S. withdrawal is a legal deadline, not a political one. It could only be changed at the request of the Iraqi government, and not by American fiat. While Iraqi politicians may say in private that they may be open to a longer U.S. presence, very few will say so in public -- because it would be political suicide in a nationalist, highly charged electoral environment.

The drawdown will probably matter considerably less than people expect. With the new SOFA-defined rules of engagement, U.S. forces have already stopped doing many of the things associated with the "surge." The Iraqi response to American efforts on the de-Baathification circus demonstrate painfully clearly that the nearly 100,000 troops still in Iraq gave very little leverage on an issue which the U.S. at least publicly deemed vital -- a point made very effectively by Ambassador Hill at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. The sharp backlash against even the measured criticisms by U.S. officials offers an important lesson:  Doing the sorts of assertive things which may please Obama's critics are highly likely to spark a negative reaction among Iraqis, generating more hostility to the U.S. role without actually accomplishing anything. The U.S. is wise to avoid them.

That doesn't mean that things are rosy. The de-Baathification circus has demonstrated the fragility of Iraqi institutions, and helped to reignite sectarian resentments and fears (many Sunnis feel targeted, while many Shia are being treated to an endless barrage of anti-Ba'athist electoral propaganda). There's very much a risk of long, drawn-out coalition talks after the election. It isn't certain how a transition from power will go, should Maliki's list lose, given the prime minister's efforts to centralize power in his office over the last few years. There may well be a spike in violence by frustrated losers in the elections. If there's massive fraud on election day, things could get ugly. The elections, already marred by the de-Baathification fiasco, may well end up producing a new Parliament and government which doesn't really change much. There are big, long-deferred issues to confront after the elections, such as the Article 140 referendum over Kirkuk.

But none of those issues would be resolved by an American effort to delay its military drawdown. They generally fall into the "sub-optimal" rather than the "catastrophic" category. An American decision to delay the drawdown would not likely be welcomed by Iraqis in the current political environment. Nor would it generate more leverage for the U.S. over internal Iraqi affairs. Iraq's future is not really about us, if it ever was -- not a function of American military levels, commitment, or caring, but rather of internal Iraqi power struggles and dynamics.

This doesn't mean that the U.S. should do nothing, of course. It should be actively involved diplomatically, with the Embassy doing all it can to push for compromises and for political accommodation on crucial issues. I agree with the Kagans that the U.S. should do more to active the non-military aspects of the SFA and consolidate the long-term relationship. It should do all it can to ensure a free and fair election in a few weeks, and to calm nerves during the coalition formation and transition period to follow. After the election serious discussions should (and will) be commenced about the long-term future relationship between the U.S. and Iraq. But none of those efforts should interfere with the strategic imperative of continuing the drawdown of forces, or with recognizing the new political realities in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship.

It isn't easy to be the pessimist on Iran's Green Movement. Everyone wants to support the brave protestors and most everyone hopes to see them prevail over an increasingly thuggish regime. I do. But over the last few weeks, Washington DC seemed to have talked itself into something more -- a belief that Iranian regime change was actually nigh, and that such regime change from below was actually more likely and easier than a negotiated deal on the nuclear program. I've been skeptical in public and private...I've been watching Arab regimes survive in the face of popular dissatisfaction for decades, and have seen all too clearly that while Middle Eastern regimes aren't good at much, they're pretty darned good at staying in power. Still, over the last few weeks I've read countless articles, and been told conspiratorially by many Iran-watchers, that February 11 would be the breakthrough for the Green Movement. And now it's pretty clear that it wasn't. So what now?

Today's fizzle shouldn't have surprised anyone, even if many hoped for more. We shouldn't read too much into it, even if expectations had been raised. But the prospects for regime change have seemed to me less likely over time rather than more likely. During those chaotic first days after the "election" fiasco, there may have been the chance for a massive cascade to change things before the regime could rally itself. But it survived that (and would have, probably even more easily, has the Obama administration publicly taken a position). Since then, it has systematically repressed and divided the opposition, harrassed its leadership and members, and taken steps to shore up its instruments of control. The internet may or may not have played a decisive role in fueling the Green Movement, but either way the regime is now prepared to shut it down when necessary. The Shi'a tradition of commemorations and major national anniversaries do offer focal points for organization and mobilization, but it also tells the regime exactly where and when to expect protest activity. In short, I fully believe that the Iranian regime is more unpopular and less legitimate than ever before -- but just don't see it as especially vulnerable at the moment. 

That's why I think the Obama team has been absolutely right to refrain from "banking on a protest movement which may sputter out or be crushed." It lacks, as one might say, "the satisfying purity of indignation." But it's the right call. We need to accept the limits of American influence over events in Iran. That doesn't mean that the U.S. shouldn't push for human rights and criticize repression -- I think that the administration should support public freedoms in Iran just as it should across the Arab world (and beyond). But it shouldn't count on a regime change from below which will largely be shaped by internal Iranian dynamics and not by American posturing.

What are the alternatives? Some seem to want a grand Presidential speech declaring solidarity with the Green Movement. These are often the same people who used to mock Obama's faith in his own rhetoric, but no matter -- people change, as do circumstances.  Would such a speech help? I doubt it. This would actually be a domestically popular move...but would have real costs which Obama is wise to avoid. It may embolden the protestors, but they are already plenty motivated on their own. It would be making an implicit promise that the U.S. would protect them if they tried to do more -- a promise which almost certainly could not be redeemed. It would also make it all the easier for the regime to demonize and discredit the opposition as American pawns and puppets. I just don't see much hope that indigenous regime change, with or without overt U.S. encouragement, is going to be the magic bullet... but think it's marginally more likely if the U.S. doesn't insert itself in the middle and make itself the issue.

The growing drumbeat for war remains as irresponsible and poorly reasoned as ever. I find it reassuring that Obama's advisers describe the main goal of their strategy as avoiding war. I would be thrilled if I could never again be forced to listen to someone explain how war is the only logical choice, the costs won't be that high and the gains enormous. But then I'd have to get out of the foreign policy business, because advocates of war always make such arguments. An American or Israeli military strike would be risky, would have massive human costs, would be devastating for the rest of Obama's grand strategy, would likely lead to dramatic turn for the worse in Iraq, would have significant (if temporary) effects on the global economy, and would likely strengthen the regime rather than weaken it. It should not be considered a serious policy option.

Nor do I think that there's a grand bargain to be had at the moment. There might have been in the opening months of Obama's Presidency, had he made different choices and approached the problem with a fresher conceptual framework. There were a lot of good ideas out there early on, about putting Iran into a wider regional framework and breaking down the rigid binary oppositions of the Bush era. We'll never know whether the electoral crisis killed the chances for momentum or whether the strategy of simultaneously engaging and preparing for sanctions when engagement failed was doomed from the start. But there's no going back, and the die is cast.

So that leaves us with negotiations and sanctions... which don't seem to have great prospects right now, but at least avoid the worst outcomes of the other approaches.  The sanctions would likely work better if they remain carefully targeted and tightly linked to negotiating strategy (i.e. the White House approach) rather than being primarily expressive and driven by domestic politics (i.e. the Senate's version). Engagement should be combined with a consistent message of U.S. support for public freedoms and human rights, which could raise the international and domestic costs of the regime's repression without tarnishing the opposition movement by association. The overall focus should be on ways to build the conditions under which a negotiation strategy can work -- no easy task, but the best option available. In general, we'd all do better if we could focus public discourse less on hopes for regime change and war, and more on the less sexy but more helpful question of how to make a negotiations strategy work.

I've been too busy dealing with the DC Snowpocalypse to blog this week. There have been some interesting developments in stories which I follow, though, which I wanted to at least briefly comment upon. First up, Iraq, where the de-Ba'athification circus is continuing. My hopes from last week that the Appeals Court had put an end to the crisis were premature, as a dizzying series of political and institutional manuevers have kept it very much alive. You can get a good summary of the state of play here, and check out excellent analysis from Gregg Carlstrom, Mike Hanna and Reider Visser.

Over the last few days, the Appeals Court's dismissal of the de-Ba'athification verdicts fell apart. The Presidency Council stepped in before a scheduled emergency session of Parliament could be convened, overruled the dismissal and determined that all the appeals should be heard by February 12. There are conflicting reports on how this is playing out, but the latest news is that the IHEC released a list of 6712 approved candidates which did not include Saleh al-Mutlak or Dhafer al-Ani, the two most prominent banned Sunni candidates (this presumably could change tomorrow). Calls to delay the elections to allow the vetting process time to play out have (thankfully) been brushed aside, while Mutlak is threatening a boycott. Meanwhile, street protests for and against the de-Ba'athification bans are merging seamlessly into the supposedly yet to begin election campaigns, while the Baathist witch-hunt is spreading to the local level with potentially dangerous consequences.

I still expect this to work out in one way or the other and for the elections to go ahead, and for some Sunni politicians to take advantage of any attempt by others to boycott. I don't expect it to lead directly to a return of the insurgency. But at the same time, by this point significant damage has probably already been done no matter how (and even if) the crisis is worked out. The prospects for the March 7 election to be a transformative event heralding a new Iraq, with fresh leadership, robust legal institutions and a post-sectarian complexion now seem scant. The legitimacy of the electoral process and the independence of Iraqi institutions have been thrown into serious question among both Iraqis and the international community. Sunni-Shia resentments have been rekindled, with such polarization evidently being seen as a winning electoral strategy in certain quarters. Sunni participation may well be depressed, though a full-out boycott is unlikely. The damage is likely to me measured in increments, not in a single apocalyptic collapse.

The prospects of the elections returning a Parliament and Prime Minister which look a lot like the current one, frustrating the hopes for change, seems higher today than it did a month ago. If the campaign season and actual voting is marred by significant fraud or abuses, as many of those targeted by the de-Ba'athification process warn, we could be heading towards an Afghan or even Iranian post-electoral crisis -- so international and American efforts right now should be oriented towards standing up a robust and credible international electoral monitoring system to try to head that off.

Despite all the U.S. efforts to keep a low profile while working behind the scenes for a rational solution -- the best it could have done in the circumstances -- it is now being publicly lambasted for its interference. Vice President Biden and Ambassador Hill's efforts to secure a compromise -- seen as too little by many American critics --  have nonetheless become a lightning rod for nationalist and sectarian rhetoric. Those Americans who continue to call on the Obama administration to "do more" in Iraq should pay careful attention to Nuri al-Maliki's direct criticism of the American role, to the denunciation of David Petraeus as a "Baathist," and to the generally pugnacious and antagonistic discourse about the U.S. in the Iraqi electoral atmosphere. Staying longer and doing more are not really in the cards.  

UPDATE:  There seems to have been an official ruling that the ban on Mutlak and al-Ani will stand, and they will not be allowed to run in the election. Expect a hot weekend.