Waiting for Petraeus

Feedback in the past several weeks from military personnel serving in Iraq suggests to me that Petraeus can honestly report that his using more U.S. troops to pacify Baghdad neighborhoods and his arming and paying Sunni tribes to fight jihadists in Anbar have improved security.

But both of those efforts contradict and undermine Bush's avowed strategy of moving as quickly as possible to turn over responsibility for security to a national Iraqi army. U.S. troops are being pushed to produce short-term security gains that are likely to be temporary and perhaps ultimately self-defeating.

Similar contradictions mar the U.S. push for political reconciliation: The White House is pressuring Iraq's Kurds to vote for a national petroleum law that is not in Kurdish interests at exactly the same time that Bush representatives are suggesting to the Kurds that the United States does not support their constitutional right to a referendum on the status of Kirkuk this year. Likewise, the U.S. Embassy pushes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to make politically damaging compromises with his foes as the CIA starts yet another version of its long-running effort to install its favorite Iraqi politician, Ayad Allawi, in Maliki's job. And so on.

The policy contradictions and conflicts within his own government that Bush has never been able or willing to resolve have created a Beckett-like hell of unfulfilled expectations and immobility for both Iraqis and Americans.

Beckett foretold this, too: As they realize that Godot is not coming, Vladimir says to Estragon, "I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have been better off alone, each one for himself. We weren't made for the same road."

Estragon replies that it is not certain, and then asks: "Well, shall we go?"

Vladimir: "Yes, let's go."

They do not move.

jimhoagland@washpost.com