"A vacation in the middle of a civil war! "

Opinion

Why benchmarks? Iraqis are dawdling as U.S. troops die

Thu May 3, 7:21 AM ET

Four months ago, President Bush addressed the nation from the White House at a critical moment in the Iraq war. The country was collapsing into sectarian violence. The American people were losing patience. Bush abandoned his sunny talk of steady progress. The situation was unacceptable, he said, as he made what amounted to one last bid for support behind a new plan.

While most attention was focused on his decision to send more troops to bring security to Baghdad, Bush was also unequivocal and stern about the need for Iraqi leaders to reach political milestones aimed at uniting them and persuading insurgents to stop fighting.

U.S. support was not open-ended, he said, and "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."

Ever since then, however, Iraqi leaders have been truer to sectarian instincts than to trying to achieve any sort of national reconciliation. The consequence is that Americans are left fighting and dying to nurture a government that the Iraqis themselves seem unwilling to support. That cannot be justified for much longer, and it is why the Iraq war funding bill that Bush and congressional leaders started negotiating on Wednesday needs to include meaningful benchmarks - with consequences for failure to meet them.

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