Easy Peasy

Iraq has always been a story full of surprises. And one of the most important political surprises is how quickly the surge has made Iraq safe for Barack Obama’s foreign policy — and for the election policy of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. — Tom Friedman

Surprised? Neither am I. This is what was supposed to happen. Not that our expectations in Iraq have ever made their attainment unremarkable. But getting to this point has been on our minds since April 2003. Now that it’s here, it’s another non-surprise that Obama and McCain’s policies on Iraq are converging. Because the commonsense convergence point is a graduated drawdown of forces, at times and places of our choosing, so as to leave a rump force in place that costs (relatively) little in blood and treasure.

Americans can tolerate that for a long, long time, as McCain knows and Obama is beginning to understand. His stated goal is now to reduce the number of fighting American soldiers in Iraq to zero. That’s a lot of wiggle room. But obviously we don’t need, or want, 100,000 non-combat personnel swarming around in Iraq. Or even bottled up in a green bottle. Even a mammoth embassy doesn’t need an army to staff it.

As much as it upsets people who’ve despised this war from the beginning (or, sometimes, from about the midway point), the convergence point we’re looking at is a far, far cry from empire. Possibly this also upsets certain neocons, for opposite reasons…but for me it sounds just fine.