Our Friends in Baghdad
Can't Mrs. Clinton move beyond Bush-bashing on America's interests in the Middle East?

Will the United States remain committed to supporting its friends and opposing its enemies in the Muslim world?

This question has been asked for decades by people from Indonesia to Morocco and throughout the Middle East. And there is no clear answer. American engagement in the Muslim world has been fitful and incoherent, leaving our friends and our opponents believing that we are at best unreliable. In the past, supporting our friends has been taken to mean Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In the case of the last three, it has meant helping more or less authoritarian governments retain power in exchange for their help in stabilizing the region.

But today, new democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq--democracies the U.S. made possible--struggle to survive against attacks from our common enemies. Both are reaching out to the U.S. and asking for a commitment of our support.

This is an epochal moment: The U.S. has a chance to break away from failed policies of the past and throw itself behind two new constitutional democracies that occupy critical geostrategic positions in the most dangerous part of the world. Will we seize this moment or let it pass?

In Iraq, the Bush administration appears to be seizing it. Recently, President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a joint communiqué in which the U.S. committed to helping Iraq defend its government against internal and external threats. In response, the Maliki government asked for a one year renewal of the current United Nation's Security Council Resolution that governs U.S. forces operating in Iraq. Mr. Maliki is also committed to working out bilateral relations with the U.S. to govern future American operations in his country.

The joint American-Iraqi communiqué marks the beginning of the normalization of relations between allies in a common fight against al Qaeda, and against Iranian efforts to dominate the Middle East. It doesn't commit the U.S. to specific force levels and it allows future governments in Washington and Baghdad to decide the role the U.S. will play in the coming years in Iraq. It is, however, an important statement of America's resolve. Even more important, it is a statement of Iraq's desire to align itself with us.

The U.S. hasn't charted as wise a course in Afghanistan. Since the establishment of Hamid Karzai's government in 2004, the Afghans have sought a bilateral agreement committing the U.S. to protect Afghanistan against foreign and domestic threats. The speaker of Afghanistan's parliament, Younos Qanuni, reiterated that desire within the past month.

But, despite a 2005 joint communiqué similar to the recent Bush-Maliki exchange, the Bush administration has deflected Kabul's request for a bilateral relationship into a much more nebulous and less effective relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A relationship with NATO is not what the Afghans want or need.

The transition of the Afghan security and reconstruction missions from U.S. to NATO control was undertaken more with an eye on what is good for NATO than for what is good for Afghanistan, and the Afghans have not benefited from it. They still want an American commitment. Given their centrality in the fight against al Qaeda and their determination in the face of our common enemies, they deserve it.

Unfortunately, opposition to the war in Iraq and partisan politics prevent a reasoned discussion of America's interests in the Muslim world. Sen. Hillary Clinton, a leader of the liberal internationalist wing of the Democratic Party (whose husband wisely committed American forces to the Balkans in the 1990s to stop genocide and establish constitutional government there), immediately attacked the Bush-Maliki communiqué.

She joined the unthinking chorus of war opponents who saw it simply as another way of institutionalizing "George Bush's endless war." Rather than pressing the administration to offer similar guarantees to another key ally at the heart of the fight against terrorism, liberal internationalists instead attacked the administration.

What sort of strategy is this? Shall we refuse our help to democratic states we helped bring into existence when they are attacked by our common foes? Shall we make a statement that we will not support our friends or that we prefer to support authoritarian regimes?

Mrs. Clinton has said that she expects U.S. troops to be in Iraq until the end of her administration, and quite rightly. But under what terms will they be there, if we do not establish a bilateral relationship with an Iraqi state eager to assert its own sovereignty, and therefore unwilling to continue in the sort of international receivership to which the Security Council subjects it?

As U.S. forces move into former insurgent strongholds in Iraq, the local people, both Sunni and Shiite, ask our soldiers not "When are you leaving?" but "Will you stay this time?" The rise of Iran's power has frightened many Gulf Arab states so much that they now ask the same question: Will the U.S. stand by them this time?

The notion that attacks on America result from the American presence in the Muslim world is nonsensical. America and its allies have been attacked when we had troops in the Middle East and when we did not; when we intervened in regional crises and when we ignored them. But our policies over the past few decades have resulted in the worst of both worlds--we have generated whatever irritant our presence in the region creates without giving our friends (and enemies) the assurance that we will actively pursue our interests and those of our allies.

It was one thing to debate how much support to offer authoritarian regimes providing questionable support to our efforts. Refusing now to defend states trying to establish constitutional and democratic government will be quite another. The immorality of such a decision is apparent. It would also be strategic stupidity.

It is time to move beyond reflexive Bush-bashing and antiwar sloganeering and consider our real interests in the Muslim world and how to secure them. It starts by declaring that we will stand by our friends in defense of common goals and against common enemies.