The Wall Street Journal contemplates the consequences of military withdrawal from Iraq.
• The U.S. would lose all credibility on weapons proliferation. One doesn’t have to be a dreamy-eyed optimist about democracy to recognize that toppling Saddam Hussein was a milestone in slowing the spread of WMD. Watching the Saddam example, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi decided he didn’t want to be next. Gadhafi’s “voluntary” disarmament in turn helped uncover the nuclear network run by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and Iran’s two decades of deception.
Gary Hart exploded the myth that the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with Gadhafi’s decision to abandon his pursuit of WMD. Gadhafi had been willing to invite inspectors into Libya back in 1992 in exchange for a normalization of relations.
But, let’s get real for a moment. The reason that Dick Cheney normalized relations with Libya has nothing to do with their decision to abandon WMD. Back in 1996, Cheney gave the game away. This is from the Journal of Commerce, March 21, 1996 (via Lexis):
Amid growing concern in U.S. industry, a House panel is expected today to approve tougher trade sanctions against Iran, threatening to increase ”secondary boycott” curbs on foreign companies that deal with the Islamic state.
The sanctions, which would strengthen penalties passed by the Senate in December, could ban U.S. trade with foreign firms making investments or selling equipment for Iranian oil and gas projects, sources said.
The Senate bill, authored by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and approved without dissent after a compromise with the White House, calls for sanctions on foreign companies only in case of major investments in Iran.
But the House bill, sponsored by GOP Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York, would add a ”trade trigger” to punish firms that sell oil equipment to Iran.
The bill before the House Intelligence Committee has been subject to intense negotiation with the administration, which fears that provisions could spark complaints to the World Trade Organization and provoke a trade war.
Some U.S. corporations fear a disruption of business with firms that run afoul of the sanctions, even on projects in countries other than Iran.
On Tuesday, Dick Cheney, former U.S. defense secretary and now president of Dallas-based Halliburton Co., slammed the unilateral sanctions at a meeting in Abu Dhabi, Reuters reported.
”There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what’s best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like,” said Mr. Cheney. ”The reality is those kinds of sanctions, unless they are part of an international effort . . . are in fact self-defeating.”
Experts say U.S. oil engineering and equipment giants like Halliburton could be hurt by the curbs, which also apply to Libya, as a result of an amendment to the D’Amato bill by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).
In 1998, Cheney had this to say about sanctions on companies that do business with Iran and Libya (via Lexis- The Australian- April 20, 1998).
FORMER US defence secretary Dick Cheney yesterday said resources giant BHP should be allowed to invest in Iran without fear of retaliation from the US Congress.
Mr Cheney, who is now the chief executive of oil services company Halliburton, the major shareholder of engineering group Kinhill in Australia, said US laws which could stop companies from selling goods or services into the US if they also conducted business with Iran were a mistake.
“I think we’d be better off if we in fact backed off those sanctions . . . didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on companies like BHP trying to do business over there,” he told the Business Sunday program.
Dick Cheney never liked sanctions, whether they applied to Iran, Libya, or Iraq. It’s bad for business. After six years in power the sanctions have been lifted for Iraq and Libya, and they are flailing around trying to figure out how to restore business relations in Iran. That is the real story behind all these threats of terrorism and WMD. Once Gadhafi confessed to having an almost defunct and totally useless WMD program, and agreed to junk it, Cheney was only too happy to lift the sanctions. It’s a fake story. Don’t fall for it. But, what about other possible consequences of military withdrawal from Iraq?
Now Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons, a prospect that might yet be headed off by the use or threat of force. But if the U.S. retreats from Iraq, Iran’s mullahs will know that we have no stomach to confront them and coercive diplomacy will have no credibility. An Iranian bomb, in turn, would inspire nuclear efforts in other Mideast countries and around the world.
Define ‘dangerously close’. For a full debunking of this scare tactic, see Steven D’s John Bolton is Lying About Iran’s Nukes. Iran has a long, long way to go before it can make nukes. As for the Iranian mullahs and their conclusions about the stomach of Americans…withdrawing from Iraq is not the same as withdrawing from the region. And we still have a big presence on their eastern border, in Afghanistan. Iran shouldn’t rest easy just because Americans are not being killed in Iraq. The WSJ continues:
• Broader Mideast instability. No one should underestimate America’s deterrent effect in that unstable region, a benefit that would vanish if we left Iraq precipitously. Iran would feel free to begin unfettered meddling in southern Iraq with the aim of helping young radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr overwhelm moderate clerics like the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.
Again, define ‘unfettered’. Iran is already meddling in southern Iraq and aiding the Badr Brigades. There is no reason to believe that the American presence in Iraq is having any meaningful deterrent effect on Iran’s meddling. But our presence is deterring Iraqis from doing anything effective to combat it. Regional instability was caused by our invasion of Iraq. Thinking that we can keep a permanent lid on chaos by staying is just stinking thinking.
Syria would feel free to return to its predations in Lebanon and to unleash Hezbollah on Israel. Even allies like Turkey might feel compelled to take unilateral, albeit counterproductive steps, such as intervening in northern Iraq to protect their interests. Every country in the Middle East would make its own new calculation of how much it could afford to support U.S. interests. Some would make their own private deals with al Qaeda, or at a minimum stop aiding us in our pursuit of Islamists.
This line of reasoning is just contemptible. How long will we have to stay in Iraq before we can safely assume that Syria and other nations will not support Palestinian resistance anymore? How long must we stay before the Turks and the Kurds kiss and make up?
• We would lose all credibility with Muslim reformers. The Mideast is now undergoing a political evolution in which the clear majority, even if skeptical of U.S. motives, agrees with the goal of more democracy and accountable government. They have watched as millions of Iraqis have literally risked their lives to vote and otherwise support the project. Having seen those Iraqis later betrayed, other would-be reformers would not gamble their futures on American support. Nothing could be worse in the battle for Muslim “hearts and minds” than to betray our most natural allies.
We already have betrayed our natural allies by making bin-Laden’s paranoid ravings turn from fantasy to reality. Remember what he said our true intentions were back in 1998 when he declared war on us? Here it is:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.
The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.
The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
It’s painful to read that analysis today. Back when bin-Laden issued that fatwa, his analysis was way off the mark. But with the rise of the neo-conservatives, his analysis has become much harder to rebut in the Muslim world. As our armed forces busily build permanent bases in Iraq and our President states that we are not leaving during his Presidency, and the WSJ argues we must stay to protect Israel from Hezbollah and Syria…what arguments can you make that will convince the average Muslim that our intentions are other than bin-Laden’s perception of them?
We betrayed our liberal minded allies in the region when we invaded Iraq based on a pack of lies. Leaving and punishing the architects of the war is the only way to begin to repair our relations and restore some credibility to pro-western Muslims.
• We would invite more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden said many times that he saw the weak U.S. response to Somalia and the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings as evidence that we lacked the will for a long fight. The forceful response after 9/11 taught al Qaeda otherwise, but a retreat in Iraq would revive that reputation for American weakness. While Western liberals may deny any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, bin Laden and the rest of the Arab world see it clearly and would advertise a U.S. withdrawal as his victory. Far from leaving us alone, bin Laden would be more emboldened to strike the U.S. homeland with a goal of driving the U.S. entirely out of the Mideast.
This is worse than a joke. Bin-laden is attempting to bankrupt us. He thinks the mujahideen succeeded in bankrupting the Soviet Union and he thinks he can repeat the job on the United States. Congress just had to raise the debt ceiling. Bush has borrowed more money than all other Presidents before him combined. Backing out of Iraq will be seen as a defeat for bin-Laden, no matter how he portrays it. And if it provokes him to attack us again, it will only be to entice us into wasting more money in a futile attempt to ‘end tyranny in our world.’
