I won’t pretend to have any expert knowledge of the situation in Iraq today, but it seems pretty clear that the history of the conflict since 2003 has made the recent events in Basra pathetically predictable.  Take what’s reported in the NY Times today.

Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had been poorly planned.

Was the operation in Basra poorly planned because the US military didn’t play a central role in the operation?  Or, if the US did play a role, is it evidence of the continuing inability of our military in Iraq to effectively take on an urban insurgency?  If planned by Iraqis, it says a lot of about how poorly US efforts to train Iraqi forces has gone.  The  failure of the Iraqi national forces this week is sad evidence that we have made little progress on one of the most critical goals we set five years ago.

“We don’t have to rush to military solutions,” said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr’s party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki “escalated the situation.”

Indeed, as many experts have been saying for some time, we need a political solution in Iraq, not a military solution.  Maliki has either understood failed to understand this or failed to bring effective political leadership to the divisions still so evident among Iraqis, between religious factions and also among the Shiites themselves.  Rather, the national Iraqi leadership seems to have signed on to the standing Bush strategy with respect to the Iraqi insurgency: respond with military force to stop the symptoms of division, while ignoring or applying failed strategies to the cause of the divisions.  

And what of “the surge” that McCain continues to insist has been so successful?  Have we witnessed any tangible political progress that was supposed to be made in the space created by an increased number of US troops In Iraq?  Has the surge had any impact on Basra, a city split among three rival factions who have shown little desire for political reconciliation?  The contrary seems to be true.  Whether because the surge was never directed at Basra or because it failed to have a meaningful impact there, the surge is clearly a failed effort.

Unfortunately we were expecting one thing but we saw something else,” said Ali Hussam, 48, a teacher, who said that after Saddam Hussein the people of Basra had hoped for peace. “But unfortunately with the presence of this new government and this democracy that was brought to us by the invader, it made us kill each other.”
“And the war is now between us,” he said.

Let’s see what John McCain has to say to explain what’s happening in Basra and whether he offers any new thinking beyond the inept, ill-conceived and futile efforts of a Republican administration he seems to have endorsed for a third term in the White House.