Echoing Amb. Crocker’s “bottom-up” picture, Gen. Petraeus told presidential hopeful Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) that what gives him reason to believe reconciliation is on the way is that reconciliation efforts on the ground are outpacing the “big law” in Baghdad. There may be no amnesty law for ex-insurgents, for instance, but amnesty is the right word for “former insurgents in Abu Ghraib next to a Sunni-Shiite fault line being allowed to attend a police academy.”
And yet in 2006, Prime Minister Maliki established a reconciliation program that didn’t go anywhere. There were a number of reconciliation conferences in 2005 as well. If Petraeus and Crocker are ready to say that centrally-directed efforts at reconciliation are irrelevant, they should say it outright, so the administration, Congress and the Iraqis can debate the point. But to suggest that local steps will lead to the end of the intractability is a tall order, belied by the last two years of history.