Sunday, December 04, 2005

 

Shall we leave Iraq?

We Americans have an important decision to make. Shall we continue our efforts in Iraq aimed at creating a stable government there that we like? Shall we proceed to begin to disengage ourselves by starting a gradual withdrawal of our troops? Shall we withdraw our troops at a rapid rate so that by some time next year the last American soldier will be leaving the country?

I have nothing to add to this debate except my own opinion. My opinion is that in the long run it doesn’t matter what we decide to do. What’s going to happen with Iraq will happen, sooner or later.

Consider the example of Viet Nam. In the 1950’s we prevented an election in that land that would have unified the country under the leadership of the regime in Hanoi. We hated that regime. It called itself “communist” and had the support of communist regimes in Russia and China. We stopped the election and supported a regime in Saigon that was “anti-communist.” We fought a war. We lost and had to leave. The country then became united under the leadership of the regime in Hanoi. We were able to delay that unification and the triumph of Hanoi for nearly a decade, but in the end, it happened anyway. Nothing we did could have prevented it.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in Iraq. There are several possibilities. First, a regime will be established more or less along the model of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This regime will be dominated by the Shia majority in Iraq. Second, Iraq will split into two or three separate states. The Kurds will have their own state, at last. The Shia will have their own state, or they may decide to join Iran. The Sunni minority will have to choose between joining the Kurdish state or forming their own. A third possibility is that the three ethnic groups in Iraq, the Kurds, the Sunni, and the Shia, will agree to keep Iraq united as one country. They will choose a new strong man to run things. Hopefully, he will be less brutal than Saddam Hussein.

The United States doesn’t like either of these first two possible futures for Iraq. We can accept the third possibility and deal with a united Iraq that has a government strong enough to keep order and maintain the flow of petroleum from the ground to the tankers that will dock at Basra. Unfortunately, there is no way for the U.S. to bring about the desired outcome. What will happen is going to happen, whatever we do or wish. We might as well leave now, before more American lives are lost.
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