Benchmarked.(AT WAR)(Iraq government)

FOR a year, critics of the Iraq War have insisted that whether the Iraqi government meets political benchmarks is the most important measure of success. It didn't matter if the central government was sharing money with the provinces or Sunnis were being reintegrated into security functions. What mattered was whether the Iraqi central government had passed legislation mandating those steps, as the benchmarks required. The Government Accountability Office even produced a checklist--literally, a checklist--of benchmarks that the Iraqi government had failed to meet.

Now the standard for judging political progress has changed. The Iraqi parliament has just passed a de-Baathification law that would allow low-level former Baathists, mostly Sunnis, to re-enter the government. This law had been included in every list of what the Iraqi government needed to do to achieve political reconciliation. It will take effect as soon as the five-person presidency council has, as expected, approved it.

The critics' latest tack is to say that the law is unsatisfactory to both Sunnis and Shiites, who interpret it in different ways. Compromises unsatisfactory to multiple sides are of course a regular feature of stable, mature democracies, and even more so of ones riven by sectarian hatred and horrific violence. The critics say that the law may perversely allow the Shiites to purge even more Sunnis from security and legal institutions. But if the government wanted to chase out more Sunnis, it would already have done so. The de-Baathification law is hardly perfect, but it is an important gesture toward reconciliation.

One reason critics of the war have fastened on ...