The big “debate” these days is between those who say we should stay the course and those who say we should set a time table for departure.
I discuss(dismiss) both options below.
Promoted by Steven D, because the subject is one we should be debating. I don’t necessarily endorse the conclusion that rdf comes to, but I think that we, as a community, and as progressives, need to begin this debate. Therefore, I’d like to see us use this diary as a starting point for discussing what American policy toward Iraq should be, other than Bush’s frequent refrain of Stay the Course.
Some background:
The reasons given for invasion were those that the troika (Rove, Rumsfeld and Cheney) thought would sway public opinion best: WMD, 9/11, and make the world safe for democracy.
The real reasons were something like these:
- Replace bases lost in Saudi Arabia
- Install client government which would sell oil on the world market under favorable terms
- Intimidate neighboring Arab states
- Prevent China from getting long-term oil contracts in the region.
How are we doing?
- 17-19 bases completed or nearly completed
- A work in progress
- Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya all behaving “better”
- Accomplished. China is now making deals with secondary suppliers like those in South America
If we were to “pull out” what would happen to the region? Would the disagreements between Iran and Iraq disappear? Would the states that we have intimidated continue to behave moderately or would they revert back to their old patterns? Would the Iraqi puppet government continue to favor the west or would it collapse?
It is time to consider whether the object of permanent bases is so bad. Getting the troops out of the population centers is obviously needed, but is total withdrawal? Notice Murtha doesn’t talk about leaving he talks about “re-deployment.” This is what he means. We had bases in Saudi Arabia for decades and the troops had minimal interaction with the rest of the country, why not the same pattern in Iraq?
What’s 17 more bases when added to the 750 we already have spread around the globe?
Staying is impossible, occupations always fail eventually (look at Algeria or Vietnam).
Leaving would open the region to even more chaos.
Staying on fortified bases may be the best option. Counter arguments?
Have you read the US embassy to Iraq cable? I can’t see how things could get much worse than they are now. Our staying is an incentive for foreign jihadis to keep coming there, since we have no border security.
The costs of staying need to be considered as weel, both the continuing cost in lives and the cost financially to operate these bases, which serve the needs primarily at this point of Halliburton’s bottom line.
I think what we need is a UN mission of peacekeepers, primarily drawn from Islamic countries (Africa, East Asia, Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, etc.) to deploy as NATO did in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s. US could provide any needed air support function from our bases in Kuwait and the UAE, as well as carrier based planes.
This would involve taking the matter to the UN, of course, which is something Bush & Co. will never do. But it is going to take that sort of political engagement by the other countries in the region and around the world to provide any real hope of a peaceful (or more peaceful) transition for Iraq. If we stay, things will get worse. If we just pull out things will get worse. There’s not a lot of difference between the two in my eyes.
I also think that ultimately there has to be a partition. We can allow a de facto partition to occur as is happening already with more an more Iraqi’s fleeing neighborhoods and areas where they are in the minority, or we can do it pursuant to some political agreement after negotiations along the lines of the Dayton accords.
Similar to the Berlin Wall?
Like the former Yugoslavia along ethnic and sectarian lines.
Wasn’t sure where you were going, but, your mention of the former Yugoslavia is about the most realistic.
Why do “we” in the West seem to think that “we” have either the wisdom or the authority or the responsibility to make major decisions directly impacting the day to day lives of millions of Iraqis?
Can anyone come forth with a credible answer to this question?
Now compare with another policy and the rationalization for it.
Medicare and Part D: Past, Present and Future?
link to original source
Well we can have all the debates we want to but something was glaringly left out of the idea of debates and bases in Iraq-namely the debate by Iraqi people and what they want. I suspect that debate wouldn’t take over 2 minutes and their wishes for having permanent American bases in their country would be made know far and wide and loud and clear.
There seems to be an idea — in the call-and-response version above of why we are there and how we are doing — that there is some sort of legitimacy to the “real reasons” why we are there. If one considers them to be illegitimate reasons in the first place, then the fact that we may be doing “well” in response to them don’t mean jack.
The “real reason” we are there, of course, is OIL. We have a government whose upper echelons is peopled by refugees from the oil industry, a government that blatantly allowed the energy industry to dictate American government policy on energy, and when they invade a country that has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world based on a bunch of outright lies and propoganda, we should be wondering why we are there?
Of course, the SUV-lovin American public (yeah, I drive an SUV) is not about to give up its energy-wastin ways, and we will fight to the death to maintain our lifestyle.
Which is pretty much what we’re doing in Iraq.
The “solution” to Iraq is simple, yet profoundly undoable — at least, undoable without a meltdown economic crisis that forces the issue (which, given the economic management incompetence of the Bush administration, we pretty much are assured of getting). The solution is to change our energy habits: conservation, alternative fuels, reduce our dependancy on foreign energy suppliers.
If we change our energy habits, then all the reasons for “staying” in Iraq go away. We won’t need their oil, we won’t need to compete with China for it, we won’t need to protect the business interests of American oil companies with the dead and mangled bodies of American soldiers, we won’t need to care from a foreign policy perspective whether Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq or any other Arab state is “good”, bad or indifferent. We can leave them to solve their own problems, whether internal or regional. Frankly, we are so freakin egotistical as a country that we actually believe we can do a better job of it than they can.
I know it’s quite the conventional wisdom that if American troops leave Iraq, the “region” will erupt in a cataclysm of violence — as if it hasn’t already. I simply don’t buy that line. Short term? Sure, there will be a “sorting out”, a “settling of scores”, maybe even a change of international boundaries. But my take is it will be short. There is business to be done — there’s still all that oil to be sold — and I believe those in the region will quickly sort things out, even their scores, and get back to busines.
Beyond that, this is a process that will happen whether we leave now or ten years from now. The only difference will be the number of dead Americans — and Iraqis — in the interim.
The war is over; for what it’s worth, we won. It’s now an occupation. The only way to end an occupation is to leave.
It’s that, or, as Jack Murtha framed it, “Stay and pay!”
Perhaps you would like to write an essay on how we can change our energy habits. Please be sure to answer questions like: how long would it take (and how much would it cost, and who would pay for it) to replace all our inefficient vehicles? How many of these new design vehicles could be produced in the near future even if everyone demanded it?
Then you can address the issue of suburban and ex-urban living. How are people going to get to school and work with no mass transit?
Then you can address the issues of globalized product distribution which requires cheap transportation so that peaches from Chile, or clothes from Asia reach US buyers. We can skip the peaches, but how about the clothing, are we going to revive our domestic textile industry, or how are we going to get new clothing?
I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about energy, but if one wants to blame the US lifestyle then one also needs to propose a solid plan on how to change things.
I do not accept the argument that we cannot accurately state a problem until we have a ready-made solution. There will never be a solution until we clearly face the real problem. The real problem is not Iraq. Iraq is a symptom. Leftvet is absolutely right. The real reason we’re in Iraq is oil.
All of the reasons you describe above, while true enough, follow from that. It’s not just a matter of lifestyle, like giving up leisure suits and opting for denim or khaki. It’s not even a matter of kicking a habit, although we are petroleum junkies, sunk so deep in our addiction that we don’t even know anymore what being clean and sober would look like. Our “lifestyle”, our economy, our very civilization is built on the assumption that petroleum will be cheap and plentiful forever.
That assumption has never been true. Unmistakable, incontrovertible evidence of its falsehood has been readily available at least since the early ’70s and we have willfully chosen not to see it. For thirty years at least, thoughtful people have been trying to tell us both about the dangers of our dependence on petroleum and about possible solutions. We have chosen to ignore their warnings and to ridicule their solutions. And now we find ourselves in an increasingly untenable position, not just in Iraq but around the world.
I don’t think it will make much of a difference when we leave Iraq. We will leave Iraq, because we cannot sustain the occupation indefinitely. And when we leave the Iraqis will find their own equilibrium. The process will probably be violent, and the outcome will almost certainly not be to our liking. That has been all but inevitable since Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld decided to invade Iraq.
We desperately need to have a discussion about energy. We should have started the discussion thirty years ago. And the longer we try to maintain the illusion that we can support our petroleum-soaked “lifestyle” by military hegemony, in Iraq or anywhere else, the harder the reckoning will be for us all.
how are we doing? you got the answers all wrong:
(1) Replace bases lost in Saudi Arabia
rdf’s answer:
17-19 bases completed or nearly completed
which begs the question whether replacing the bases in saudi arabia is a good thing or bad thing
why, pray tell, do we need to replace the bases in saudi arabia? it’s because the locals were no longer tolerating them. in fact, our very presence there had become so destructive, it is the reason that bin laden first declared war on the u.s. there is a straight line between the saudi bases and 9/11
so the question is not how well are we replacing them, but rather whether bases in the region are worth it.
to me, the answer is easy: no.
the existence of al qaeda, the growth of the iraqi insurgency, hell, even just the connotations of the word for “occupation” in arabic, all indicate that it is simply not in american interests to maintain permanent military bases in that region. whatever strategic benefits they give us are vastly outweighed by the strategic liabilities.
(2) Install client government which would sell oil on the world market under favorable terms
rdf’s answer: A work in progress
again, see above. then see iran in the 1950s through 1970s. or saudi arabia now. hell, there are a ton of client governments we have established or propped up to sell oil on the world market under favorable terms. none are something we should want to repeat in iraq
once again, it’s not a question of how far along we are in achieving some goal dreamed up by a bunch of neo-cons, but rather whether those goals are even worthwhile. in most cases, the answer is simply “no”
(3) Intimidate neighboring Arab states
rdf’s answer: Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya all behaving “better”
my response is a little different for this one. for #1 and #2, rdf had the right answer, it was the question that was flawed. in this case both the question and the answer that are the problem.
having initmidation of other countries as a foreign policy goal is stupid in the short term, sheer madness in the long term. the way that the u.s. got where it is today is because it turned away from such real politic in the past–the way we treated japan and germany post-WW2 vastly increased american power and prestige in the world because we did not intimidate them or try to bend them to our will.
in the long term it’s crazy simply because we won’t be a world power forever. governing the world through intimidation only makes well-entrenched enemies in the long run. and worse, acting like a bad guy strengthens people like osama bin laden. if the u.s. is out to intimidate the arab world, then the heroes are the people who stand up to the global bully. your argument, in essence, endorses exactly what al qaeda claims it is fighting against.
but rdf is also completely wrong on his answers, even if we assume that the goal itself is somehow valid
syria: how is syria acting better? pre-iraq war syria got itself a western-oriented reformist president who made early efforts to modernize the syrian political system. the iraq invasion has strengthened the hard-liners in his regime, plus syria has been inundated with iraqi refugees and is now a major transit route for anti-american insurgents. political reform has completely stopped in the past few years. by any measure, the iraq war has made things a lot worse, not better, for syria
jordan: again, how is jordan better now? pre-iraq war jordan was a pro-american country. it had a free trade agreement with the u.s. and a peace treaty with israel. since the iraq war that is still true, only now the monarchy is politically paralized because of its perceived close ties to the u.s. the iraq war took a relatively bright spot in the middle east and made it a little bit dimmer
lebanon: if you’re not under a neo-con spell, it’s hard to argue that lebanon was effected much by iraq. lebanon’s issues are syria and israel. when i was in beirut last september and asked people about the effect they thought the iraq war had on lebanon’s democracy movement, they laughed incredulously. “do americans really believe that?” one asked me. “are americans really that stupid?” another added.
you can argue that lebanon was helped slightly by the iraq war. when the people took to the streets against the syrian occupation in february 2005, syria did not come in with tanks. maybe they would have if the u.s. wasn’t on their border.
on the other hand, the lebanese democracy advocates had completely different sympathies. many saw themselves as iraqis and the syrians as the american-style occupiers. i guess, in a way, you can view that as a backhanded way that the u.s. occupation of iraq helped inspire democracy. it inspired resistance to occupation
libya: well, first it doesn’t border iraq. and if you’re going to go all the way to libya to look for a success story, you gotta subract points for the anti-democratic crackdowns in egypt and the strengthening of iran’s position in the region.
second, libya came out from the cold in 1999 when it announced that it wanted better relations with the u.s. and was willing to do anything to get it. that’s why they turned over the lockerby bombers in ’99. that’s why they cooperated with american intelligence about al qaeda after 9/11. and that’s why they announced they were giving up their nuclear program just after the iraq war. it wasn’t iraq per se. it could have been anything. if the u.s. had a face-off with bolivia over puppies, libya would have made headlines turning over its puppies to international inspectors.
in other words, libya wasn’t intimidated into giving up its weapons. giving up its weapons was just the opportunity for its 5 year old policy
(4) Prevent China from getting long-term oil contracts in the region.
rdf’s answer: Accomplished. China is now making deals with secondary suppliers like those in South America
wrong. china has expanded its oil deals in the middle east and south america. china is growing. it needs more oil. one of its biggest supplier is iran. it also buys a lot of gulf oil, including iraq oil. if this is one of the goals of the invasion of iraq, we’ve failed. china is getting more middle eastern oil than ever.
I just want to point out that goals I listed are not mine, they are what I have surmised are the real goals of the administration troika. It is also not my evaluation of the “success” of these goals, but my guess as to how the administration is evaluating their progress. After all it is Cheney who keeps claiming the insurgency is in the last throes. Even if he is mostly BSing the public, they must, at some level, think things are going the way the want. Self delusion is a power drug, look at LBJ and McNamara, for example.
As for the issue of whether we need bases in the region, that is a different question. If the admin thinks we need bases then it is one of their goals. It may be a poor goal, or an unrealistic goal, but it is still a goal.
Read Chalmers Johnson’s new book “The Sorrows of Empire” for a discussion of whether we need 750+ bases worldwide.
What I still haven’t seen discussed is what happens if we “lose” the Iraqi oil, both in terms of oil supplies to the west and the overall cost worldwide.
Without an energy policy in the US we are left with only a military policy. I’m assuming this won’t change in the near future since it hasn’t in the past 40 years. Therefore the question becomes: “how to make the best of a bad situation?”
If anyone thinks my goals are not an accurate picture of what is driving the present administration then feel free to offer your own list. WMD and Al Qaeda are not credible reasons.
i agree that the goals you listed roughly correspond to the goals of the administration.
but if that’s all you were trying to say, then that means your conclusion that “Staying on fortified bases may be the best option.” that only makes sense if you buy the administration’s goals. i don’t. so how well they are fulfilling those goals is largely irrelevant to the question of whether we should stay
put another way, say the bush administration’s goal was to get the u.s. nuked by a foreign power. so they start giving away fissionable material to regimes that hate us, and then work hard to further piss those foreign regimes off. you could say that the bush policy is quite effective at achieving their goals. but that doesn’t mean that their goals aren’t pure madness, or that we shouldn’t do everything possible to make sure they don’t succeed.
iraq policy is less extreme, but only by a little bit. our invasion seriously harmed american national security and we will be paying for that for the rest of my life. but the fact that they had a couple of goals i don’t embrace does not mean that i should applaud if they somehow manage to get close to achieving them. nor should i conclude that maybe we should build bases in iraq because it is an achievable if that goal is also harmful (as i believe it is).
I don’t think it’s possible to engage in a meaningful debate about solutions to the Iraq debacle until we begin to jettison the denial, the dysfunctional mythology, the wishful thinking, that informs our opinions.
One thing is clear; it’s impossible to chart an accurate course to a desired end if one refuses to acknowledge the reality of where one is starting from in the first place. Many now almost gratuitously argue that; “Whether or not you agreed with the reasons for going to war or not is not important; now that we’re there we need to find a way to get out with a good result”.
I disagree. We need to first, publicly and loudly, unambiguously acknowledge, as a nation, that the invasion of Iraq by the Bush regime was the biggest and most destructive mistake made by the US since the invasion of Vietnam. We must stop all the equivocating, all the lame justification-based rhetoric attempting to legitimize our misadventures by emphasizing the odious nature of Saddam, the (phony) excuse that the “intel” was wrong, or that somehow since our intentions were “good” that we must follow through because good must triumph. All of this crappy talk is bullshit in every way.
Until there is a leadership in this country that is strong enough to acknowledge the error of this invasion *we will not be able to devise a solution that serves either the Iraqis best interests or our own. As long as we perpetuate the lie that there was justification for this invasion and it’s bloody aftermath, we will continue to undermine our own interests and continue to destroy the very fabric of our society and the principles upon which it was founded.
I think Eisenhower remarked at length one time about how politics and diplomacy was largely about “saving face”; about finding ways to permit your adversaries to “save face” while you simultaneously negotiate successfully for what you yourself want. (Kruschev was large on his horizon back then and I’m sure he had him in mind when he was talking about this stuff.)
I would expand on this idea somewhat; expand into a somewhat darker characteristic of it. Politicians are for the most part ego-centric, and as such are quite loath to be perceived as being wrong. Certainly the Bush regime’s cabal of lunatics demonstrate this pathological aversion to admitting error. Politicians also are terrified of being embarrased or humiliated publicly, as most self-absorbed, narcissitic people are. So we have leaders who cling so determinedly to their delusions of infallibility that they are never able to “perceive reality”, and we have the “opposition politicians” who may be able to glimpse some of the reality too afraid to speak up about it fortrightly for fear of being smeared, humiliated by the wingnut propaganda machine and their willing enablers in the media.
These two obstacles are by far the biggest impediment to halting the insanity we’ve brought to the world with these wars. Unless we can break the emotional stalemate inherent in our current political machinery I think the only way to stop thespread of the war is to starve it of money like what came about with Vietnam. However, even if the Dems were to achieve s majority in both houses of congress, I have serious doubts as to whether they would actually dare to start cutting the war budget.
We need bases in the region. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. The question is where we should have them. Before Bush occupied Iraq, It would have been relatively easy to maintain bases in Kuwait, Turkey, Qater, UAE and even Afghanistan.
But Iraq has complicated all of that. I fear if this business is not concluded soon, we may become unwelcome in Arab countries which were once relatively friendly to the US, such as Kuwait. Occupying was just a stupid thing to do.
It is important to stop using Bush friendly terminology, however. There is not a nd never has been an “Iraq War”. If you call it that then you will lose the argument because… if it’s a war, and we stop fighting it for some reason other than our enemy surrendered, then we lost. Americans hate losing and will never vote for someone who promises defeat. I’m not sure that Liberals get that.
We are not at war with Iraq, we occupied it. A good comparison to the US invasion of Iraq would be Germany’s occupation of Italy in 1943 or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The old regime was unpopular and weak, there was little organized resistance. We aren’t fighting terrorists or militias, we aren’t fighting any specific organization. We’re occupying a hostile country (especially in al Anbar) and the people who live there are resisting any way they can.
It is important to note that the Iraqi people (with the exception of Kurds) do not support US bases on their soil. They want us out. That’s all anyone needs to say, really. They don’t like us. They don’t want us in their country. When you state the facts clearly, this mission goes from being a noble struggle for freedom and justice by our brave soldiers to a brutal and ill conceived forced occupation of a foreign country against the will of it’s people.
So what do we do know?
If we want stablity in Afghanistan or in various regions in the Middle East, we should be deploying money to those regions, not more soldiers with guns.
If on the other hand, we want to control the region for our own benefit, we still would be better served by deploying more money and fewer troops.
I would agree at least to the idea that a significant reduction of US forces in South Asia would be wise, if for no other reason than to reduce the strain being placed on our Army and bring home our National Guardsmen. This can be accomplished only by withdrawing from Iraq.
I reject the notion that “soldiers with guns” is inherently bad. The presence of international forces in Bosnia put a stop to the genocide going on there. It can be done. But not with guys like Rumsfeld calling the shots.
I wasn’t advocating the notion that “soldiers with guns” is inherently bad. But it does seem to me, at least where Afghanistan, Iraq and the broader Middle East is concerned at this point in time, that our large and active military presence there is having an effect that is diametrically opposed to our (supposed) goals in the region.
By every objective and subjective measure, the situation with respect to the prosecution of the war in Iraq is exacerbating the problem and is stimulating more violence, while at the same time contributing to the rapid disintegration of basic civil infrastructure and economics as well as increasing the divisiveness between the ethnic and tribal groups that comprise the broader Iraq population.
It seems also that, contrary to the popular contention that most Iraqis are glad we’re there, actual evidence, (what little there is), seems to repudiate this meme rather forcefully.
My point above is really centered around the idea that had we behaved more like an invader that wanted to secure the territory and help the population, we would have secured the ammo dumps, hired the Iraqi Army grunts instead of sending them all into the unemployment line, and started spending huge sums of money to rebuild and expand Iraqi infrastructure, with most of the money being spent going to Iraqis themselves to participate in the work and benefit directly from it. But we didn’t do any of that. Instead we guaranteed the insurgents would have plenty of munitions, we bombed into oblivion far more of the infrastructure than was required, and most of the so-called reconstruction money was given to US companies who have in turn looted our own treasury and failed to perform as contracted in Iraq.
We will still be reviled throughout the region regardless of what actions we take now, because we had no legitimate cause to attack Iraq in the first place. Yet even so, the above negligence has made a doomed task even more bloody and pointless and tragic. Even if we had done everything “right”, the whole scheme was doomed to fail because we had no business invading in the first place.
I do think if we had maintained the pursuit of bin Laden in Afghanistan until we captured him and his mentor Zawahiri, and if we then had actually spent even 20% of what we’ve squandered in Iraq on rebuilding Afghanistan and helping it reconstitute itself from the repression of the Taliban and a decade of war with the soviets, that both our own interests, the interests of most Afghanis, and the interests of the world at large would have been much better served.
As it is now, our militarism in Iraq has magnified the intensity and the scope of the difficulties in the world by several orders of magnitude. And our continued presence there only provkes more of the same.
I cannot see a legitimate purpose for our soldiers in Iraq as long as their presence stimulates more harm thyan good. I welcome any evidence or point of view that challenges this perception, but I haven’t heard one yet.
IMHO.
I don’t disagree with you. Invading Iraq was a stupid thing to do. It wasn’t justified. Nothing good can come from staying in Iraq.
I would be interested in what possible advantage you see, (or more precisely what possible benefit to US national interest you might see), in permanent mioitary garrisons of US troops in Iraq.
I have no idea why we need bases is Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter. I’m not a military expert, however it has been US policy since the end of WWII, so somebody thinks it is important.
As I’ve mentioned before read Chalmers Johnson’s recent book “Sorrows of Empire” for his take on the issue.
All I’m saying is that having bases in the region is/was a policy goal and this goal is unlikely to be abandoned. There are stories around about how much has already been spent on these bases (something like $3+ billion) and that they are designed like small town in the US with fast food restaurants and other amenities.
Therefore, I think that the admin has been lying about their goals (as I stated originally) and I think the Dems are being unrealistic for proposing “no permanent” bases legislation.
I also don’t accept the remarks of those who continue to complain about our lack of an energy policy and don’t address recommendations. This is just whining. People who visit sites like this “get it”, we don’t need to hear about energy waste, what we do need to discuss is how to fix it. It may be that we will have a catastrophe, like New Orleans, but even such extreme happenings can be mitigated if there is enough advance planning. The tragedy of New Orleans was not a lack of knowledge it was a lack of political will. It’s like the story of the man hitting the donkey over the head with a 2×4 to “get his attention.” How many more times do we need to be hit over the head before we realize that things can’t continue on the present course?
The permanent bases in Iraq will simply end up as ammunition for the anti-west sentiments in the Muslim but especially the Arab world.
Crusaders occupying one of the ancient capitals of their world will fester like a… well, you get the picture. Just ask the Israelis.
Scoff at our troops as crusaders, but what are we doing there if not trying to impose our way of life on them?
The irony is that our crusade is simply strengthening the position of the Iranians and decentralizing potential terrorists, but giving the more recruits, so we’ll have more terror that’s harder to track down.
I still don’t understand what victory or mission accomplished in Iraq would look like. It can’t be a liberal democracy – best case would be a theocracy with controlled elections a la Iran.
And when we establish the bases and redeploy, how many go back to Afghanistan to finish the job there? But again, I don’t really understand what the finished job there will be either.
Sharia Law, executing gays, removing freedoms already won by women in Iraq (under Saddam, ironically)?
By default retreating to the permanent bases is probably what will happen. But will this be in a divided Iraq (Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan?), with frequent trips to Afghanistan to quell the Taliban there?
And what role do our troops play in the continuing civil war from their permanent bases?
Our troops as currently engages are doing little to stop the raging violence. If that continues while we’re there, we’ll be accused of taking the side of whoever is committing the worst atrocities – atrocities you know will be committed.
The sooner we can do without the oil, the better off we’ll be – but that does nothing for us in the short term. Expect more blood and money for the indefinite future.
Better to have our boys and girls in the permanent bases than the triangle of death, but how do you keep them there with an Iraqi civil war raging?
What is desperately needed is more discussion on the Iraq issue everywhere not just on Booman. The problem is there are no good solutions. The current whack a mole mode is unsustainable. The moles are whacking back.
One Option is that the US beefs up its forces with the draft and really pacifies Iraq and Afghanistan creating a Greater American Prosperity and Freedom Sphere. This requires genocide which will seriously piss off a billion Muslims for generations. Even the fairly benevolent occupation of Eastern Germany by Russia was after a generation unsustainable.
The other Option is living within our means like Brazil. This will mean wrenching changes in the USA and may even bring on a Revolution to overthrow the Wall Street Oligarchy.
I think you’ve made a worthy case. However, I also think you’ve relied too heavily on this:
“Leaving would open the region to even more chaos.”
That, I believe, is a wholly faulty assumption. One can, in fact, make a compelling argument that our presence is the cause of most of the present chaos.
Suppose we leave and then the region does degenerate into chaos. What then?
Should the US have a re-intervention policy? Should it be secret or stated in advance: “we are leaving, but if you don’t play nice we will be back”.
Look what happened to Afghanistan and Somalia after we lost interest. I think that those advocating full withdrawal (with or without a “timetable”) need to also describe the contingency plans.
Suppose Iraq doesn’t degenerate but becomes a client of, say, China. What would our position be then. During the cold war we went to almost any lengths to prevent the USSR from expanding would we behave any differently now if we saw China trying the same thing?