Can This War Be Won?

MAX BECHERER / POLARIS FOR TIME
BLOODIED: U.S. troops inspect a car bombing in Baghdad that left four G.I.s wounded

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Given the scale of the resentment, will any vote held under such conditions be considered acceptable? One key will be to assure Sunni leaders that they will have a stake in the new political order. "The level of violence does not preclude elections," says a Western diplomat in Iraq. "I'm not hitting the panic button on this yet." In any case, the election will be less about U.S.-style campaigning than back-room haggling, with the goal of putting together a fairly representative government that can slowly win legitimacy. "Democracy is a new concept in Iraq," says a State Department official. "If this is lighter on democracy and heavier on the negotiated elements, then so be it."

If all the above goals can be achieved and there's no guarantee that they can what will Iraq look like? In the short run, it could wind up resembling the Administration's other exercise in nation building, Afghanistan: lawless and plagued by jihadist insurgents, with a weak central government dependent on U.S. protection for survival. Optimistic U.S. and Iraqi officials hope that over the course of years the country will evolve into an Arab version of Pakistan, a fractious quasi-democracy held together by a strongman but reasonably able to defend itself. Few Americans had such an outcome in mind when the U.S. went into Iraq last spring. But if that's the bargain required to find a way out, there are even fewer who wouldn't take it.