The US has given up on reconciliation, too

This WaPo frontpager saying that Iraqis have given up on "reconciliation" is getting a fair amount of blog ink, but really, if you look at the US strategy, it has given up on near term reconciliation as well.

If you look at what's happening, rather than the White House rhetoric, the US is now aiming for a "balance of powers" peace, arming and training Sunni militias and attempting to limit the arms coming into the Shia from Iran.

There's been a lot of language about "bottom up reconciliation," and that's really what that means. Arming and organizing local Sunni groups and targeting Shia ethnic cleansing to try to stem the Shia wave that was rolling over the country.

Political reconciliation has been dead for quite a while. It's just that its corpse has been trotted periodically out because the Bush administration tied itself to that talking point.