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Joe Conason makes the fundamental assumption that the insurgency is a monolithic bloc that can be negotiated with. Other than the remnants of the Sadammist wing of the Baathist Party and the Jihadist group , that goes down as a new "lie" for the Iraq situation. Since we can eliminate dealing with the Jihadists by definition, since their aims are unacceptable for all parties, that leaves what I assume Mr Conason calls the "Sunnis" as the part to deal with.
Excuse me, what are the political aims of this group, that by last count represent 20% of the population of Iraq? To get the power back they lost when the previous regime collapses? To regain all of their power over the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq? More oil money from the areas they do not control? I seemed to have missed all of their political aims on the news, other than "reject". Or perhaps if someone lays this down in black and white, the whole "noble resistance" suddenly would appear as a power hungry bunch of thugs who will kill and stop at nothing to get back on top of the heap.
The thing that bothers me the most from all of this - and a pox on both houses , Democrat or Republican too - is that the aim of the Iraq invasion was to change the political strucure of the middle east by starting an irreversable slide away from dictatoral regimes by empowering the locals. No one can say this out loud of course, because it would "offend" our ostensible friends in the surounding countries who seriously need to have their butts shown to the door.
Iraq is a mess because the tribal and clan structures that make up the social structure have not been allowed to reach an equilibrium after they were shuffled by the war. If the training program continues and the Kurds and Shia army reaches any form of semi-independence, then maybe the Sunnis will deal - since it is well know that a hanging concentrates the mind. But keep the eye on the larger goal too - the obvious one of changing the political structure of the whole middle east - into something resembling a representative democracy - or the local equivalent thereof.
