As is customary with the ebb and flow of the Iraq withdrawal debate, Col. Timothy Reese’s widely disseminated memo calling for a slightly accelerated timeline for removing troops from Iraq has provoked responses from those that warn against deviating from the original timeline (at least in terms of getting out ahead of schedule), and those that advocate pushing the ultimate withdrawal date back a decade, or longer (as necessary).
The latter link is from a Barbara Walter column in the Los Angeles Times which argues that the risks of a civil war re-erupting in Iraq should compel us to maintain a troop presence in Iraq for "an additional five to 10 years" beyond the 2011 deadline imposed by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) previously agreed to by the governments of Iraq and the United States.
In making her case, Walter undermines the narrative of the successful Surge. Recall, the Surge was supposed to create space for the various warring factions to forge a lasting political reconciliation. Its critics, however, have claimed that the Surge has only managed to freeze conflicts in place, conflicts which would be thawed out and revisited at a later date (and even then, the Surge was only able to achieve this with the help of extenuating circumstances):
A country that has experienced one civil war is much more likely to experience a second and third civil war.
That’s partly because violence tends to exacerbate the political, economic and social problems that caused war to break out in the first place. But it is also because the first civil war often ends with no clear victor and no enforceable peace settlement. As soon as the combatants have rested and resupplied, strong incentives exist to try to recapture the state. [...]
Combatants who end their civil war in a compromise settlement — such as the agreement to share power in Iraq — almost always return to war unless a third party is there to help them enforce the terms.
While she may have a point about the likelihood of various civil wars reigniting, it’s less clear that there has ever been even a compromise agreement to "share power in Iraq." That power sharing agreement, the elusive ‘political reconciliation’ that was, again, the primary goal of the Surge, has yet to emerge. The current governing pact has never really had widespread buy-in from various insurgent and insurgent-friendly groups – hence the need to expand beyond the four corners of the current political set-up, amend the constitution and reach accords on various other key issues such as federalism/centralism, control of oil, incorporation of Sunnis into the security forces, etc.
