But that’s not the way it’s going, and for obvious reasons. Here are the objective circumstances. Iraq is a weak nation with a fragile government and a tense, teetering peace. Its government has the benefit of its rejectionist factions being weaker for the moment and a provincial election that provided a basis for a broader-based governing compact — one that wasn’t based purely on sectarian interest. But no faction — Power-That-Be or Power-That-Isn’t — believes its situation to be permanent. The Big Strategic Fact is that the United States will be out by December 2011, and instead of broadening the sectarian basis for governing, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is acting intransigently toward the Awakening Councils and the Baath Party. It’s pretty easy to see that if those two glide paths continue onward, Iraq will spiral downwardly before and after the United States leaves. At least some RationalBot7999s will believe it to be in their interest to see Maliki continue his intransigence on reconciliation, as it will provide them a pretext to dislodge him in the future.

There hasn’t been a U.S. ambassador in Baghdad since February. Chris Hill arrived on Friday. The Times points out out that at least some messages between Maliki and the United States have been communicated through the White House “war czar,” Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who I understand is going to be a Bush administration holdover who isn’t leaving office this year. That’s, to say the least, sub-optimal, and Hill’s arrival will undoubtedly augur a U.S. interlocutor who isn’t halfway around the world. Hill’s task has to be to persuade Maliki — and, to different degrees, Maliki’s counterpart leaders in the opposing Iraqi factions — to view U.S. troop withdrawals as deadlines for expanding the base of the government. It would be a post-Status of Forces Agreement update of the “Conditional Engagement” strategy proposed last year by Colin Kahl and Shawn Brimley of the Center for a New American Security. Hill would have at least two important Pentagon allies for that strategy: Kahl and Brimley, who are now officials in the policy directorate there; Kahl even has the Iraq portfolio.

“It took much longer than it should have, but I am pleased that Chris Hill has finally been confirmed as President Obama’s Ambassador to Iraq. He is one of the best diplomats we have in our country. Despite the significant security improvements, Iraq remains in a precarious state, and we need our Ambassador on the ground immediately. Ambassador Hill has personally assured me he will get to Baghdad as quickly as he can, and I look forward to working with him and supporting his efforts in any way I can.”

With a cloture vote expected possibly later tonight on the nomination of Chris Hill to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq, an aide to Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) says the Kansas Republican plans to use all 30 hours of debate time allotted to describe his objections to Hill’s confirmation. Sen. Brownback won’t yield a single minute, the aide says, unless the Senate agrees to debate Brownback’s proposal for sanctions against North Korea.

At least Brownback’s people are being forthright that their boss doesn’t care about Iraq here. Brownback’s position seems to acknowledge that he can’t stop Hill’s confirmation, and simply wants to trade being an irritant on this issue for debate on an unrelated bill. So it goes.

“I’m sure North Korea thinks they can get a better deal from the Obama administration than the previous administration,” says Paik Jin-hyun, a professor of international relations at Seoul National University. He says North Korea’s ultimate goal is one it has had for a long time: the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea and its own eventual control of the Korean peninsula.

Good luck with all that. Still, it’ll be fun to see how Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) ties this all to the alleged diplomatic perfidies of Chris Hill on Monday when the Senate takes up Hill’s nomination to be ambassador to Iraq.

I’ll have the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Maliki and President Talabani while I’m here. Obviously we’ve spent a lot of time trying to get Afghanistan right. But I think it’s important for us to remember that there’s still a lot of work to be done here. And in addition to thanking our troops, I also want to send a strong message to our diplomatic corps and our civilians that they’re going to be critical to our success here.

We’ve made significant political progress. You’ve seen a greater willingness on the part of all the factions in Iraq to resolve their issues politically and through non-violent means. But with the national elections coming up, many of the unresolved issues may be brought to a head. And it’s very important for us to use all of our influence to encourage parties to resolve these issues in ways that are equitable and fair. And I think that my presence here can help do that.

What could probably do more than that is for Chris Hill, Obama’s nominee to become ambassador to Iraq, to get an up-or-down vote in the Senate when it returns from recess after next week.

Sen. Sam Brownback is holding up the nomination owing to a dispute over North Korea, and even neoconservatives in good standing like Max Boot consider the objections a bit trivial compared to the magnitude of the ambassadorial task in Iraq. Here’s Boot quoting an anonymous Bush administration official:

I agree with your post this morning on Chris.  I had the same differences with him over 6 PT [six party talks with North Korea] as Brownback and he wouldn’t have been my choice for Baghdad, but 1) absent some gross dereliction or other disqualifying factor the President deserves to have the diplomatic team of his choice, 2) Dave [Petraeus] and Ray O[dierno] really are anxious to have their civilian partner in place to take advantage of the progress we have made.  I think Brownback should let Chris have an up or down vote ASAP.  That is a different question than whether or not Brownback/Kyl or others want to vote against him to make a point.

Still, it’s conspicuous that Obama didn’t call for an up or down vote on Hill from Baghdad.

What he didn’t say, though, was whether he’d attempt to place a hold on the nomination if it clears the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I’ve got a call out to his spokeswoman to determine that and will update when I hear. The committee expects to vote on Hill’s nomination on March 31.

It remains something of a quixotic fight for Brownback. No senator expressed opposition to Hill during this morning’s nomination hearing, and the Pentagon has gone on record in saying that the ambassadorship in Baghdad needs to be filled as soon as possible.

No GOP Senators on the panel appeared dissatisfied with Hill’s answers on North Korea. Certainly none pledged opposition to his nomination, or joined with the idea floated by Brownback to hold him in place. My next phone call is to Brownback’s office, to see if anything Hill said swayed the Senator.

I’ll have a wrap-up piece later today.

“That is the position as I understand it,” Hill answers. “It is the position that we will withdraw all forces by Dec. 31, 2011.” He prefaced his answer by saying he wanted to get a thorough text-based answer to Webb’s concerns about the specific language of the SOFA, but that’s a flat declaration.

Hill says, “I said in the testimony that when we get to the next phase, which in July [at the hearing] I thought would come” would lead to the phase where Brownback’s favored human rights envoy would be present for talks. “In retrospect, Senator,” Hill concedes, “when I realized we weren’t going to get to Phase Three, I should have gone back to Sen. Brownback.”

Wicker asks Hill to respond to a piece from The Weekly Standard that alleges Hill spoke bilaterally with the North Koreans “in defiance” of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s instructions. “This was an effort to get the start of the six-party talks going,” in the summer of 2005, he says. “She wanted the Chinese to be there. The Chinese came but the North Koreans were not there to carry on the meeting without the Chinese.” They were prepared to leave. Rice was in the air. “The audible I had to call: do I continue the meeting or do I walk out? I made a judgment to continue the meeting. At the end of the meeting, the North Koreans announced they would continue the six-party talks.” He says he remembers “quite well” that the next meeting Rice “was quite angry, but quite angry with the Chinese.” Hill says he knows “some journalists have tried to make this more dramatic” than it was. Wicker backs off after Hill says that Rice never expressed anger with him.

“I’m the first to say that the job is not done,” Hill says, pointedly reminding Wicker that Hill implemented North Korea disarmament policy, not crafted it by himself. He adds that he “really respects” Brownback’s human rights concerns. “It’s not going to be a normalization, ‘you give up the nukes and we treat you like an ally,’” but rather one in which the United States pushed North Korea on human rights, and he “regrets” the inability of the North Korean disarmament process  to get to that point.