By Andrew L. Jaffee

Iraq’s government is now “talking to a range of insurgent groups.” Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has posed alongside Ahmed Shibani, “a senior aide to radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr,” for picture ops. The BBC claims that Sadr’s Mehdi Army “has largely been co-operating with the Baghdad security plan imposed in mid-February.” Good news? Hmmm…

I’m not so sure how meetings between a Shiite-led government and a Shiite terrorist group, Sadr’s, will convince the Kurds and Sunnis of anything. The Kurds will probably be OK in the long run, as long as the U.S. provides a post-Gulf-War-like no fly zone for them. The Shiites restrained themselves endlessly in the face of ceaseless Sunni attacks, but finally succumbed to the blood-feud (reprisals led by Sadr). Iraq’s Sunni groups want nothing less than a Sunni-controlled caliphate to reign over Iraq.

Under pressure from the U.S., and then Maliki, Sadr has quieted down, but this leaves the Sunni terrorists still where they were. The Shiites were already quiet at the beginning of the liberation. I wish there could be a true national reconciliation, but after all the violence, and a U.S. public wearying, is it all too little, too late?