Hard Choice
William Stuntz, writing in the Weekly Standard spells out the choices available in the Iraq war. A specific analysis of what the consequences of each possible scenario indicates that the choices boil down to win or get out. The repercussions of getting out would be enormous and all negative. Winning leads to a number of much brighter outcomes.
There are three plausible grounds for pulling out of a war. First, the status quo might be both acceptable and stable; something resembling victory might already have been achieved. That is roughly the decision the United States made in Korea after 1951: The North Korean and Chinese invasions of South Korea had been repelled, and the South's government was unlikely to fall if the fighting ended. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations both decided to stop fighting as soon as the Chinese and North Koreans were willing to accept the continued division of the peninsula.
Plainly, this condition doesn't hold in Iraq today. Iraq isn't stable; it's radically unstable. A pullout now risks a regime controlled by radical Shiites like Moktada al-Sadr–another ally for Iran, to add to Baathist Syria and Hezbollah-ruled Lebanon. That isn't near-victory; it's total defeat.
Second, success may be worth too little to justify the effort. A good many opponents of the Vietnam war argued that our side was no better than the Viet Cong, that the fight was between two sets of thugs–and the thugs on the other side had more popular support. The "our side is no better" line pops up a lot these days in connection with Iraq, but it simply isn't true.
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On the other hand, if American forces were to leave Iraq now, the likely result would be an escalating civil war that would radicalize Iraq's Shiites, leaving Sadr and his ilk in control of either the whole country or its Shiite-majority region–along with most of its oil. That would give Ahmadinejad's Iran a chain of likeminded governments stretching from Afghanistan's western border to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A jihadist Shiite superpower with nuclear capability at the head of such an alliance is a truly terrible outcome, comparable in world-historical terms to Hitlerite rule over Europe. It is well worth fighting to prevent this–indeed, it is worth fighting harder than America has fought to date.
There is one more possible reason to head for the exits in Iraq: Victory is either impossible or (what amounts to the same thing) prohibitively expensive. And there is a sure-fire test of whether or not victory truly is impossible: See whether a rising number of American soldiers in a given city or neighborhood tends to produce more violence or less. If the answer is more, then it is pointless to send more soldiers; the ones who are already there are doing net harm. But that is not what the evidence shows.
Read the whole thing it spells out good reasons why losing in Iraq would be a very bad idea for the country and for the world. And I suspect that the American electorate is a lot more interested in winning this than is running away now that we are in it.
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 29 August , 2006 @ 10:03 am
“See whether a rising number of American soldiers in a given city or neighborhood tends to produce more violence or less. If the answer is more, then it is pointless to send more soldiers; the ones who are already there are doing net harm. But that is not what the evidence shows.”
Yup.. Problem with this logic is that according to the conclusion you have to flood Iraq with US soldiers - as the relative peace (???) is over as soon as they move out of the “secured” area. Not to mention the complaints that at times they simply stand, and listen to the gunfire, and just moves in after the slaughter is over.
But yes, now it is a responsibility to stabilize the region again.
Would not be good if after messing up everything the US simply pulled out, leaving the smoking ruins behind.
“a lot more interested in winning this than is running away now that we are in it.”
Yes. Go on, and win the war.
You started it, finish it up.
Just please, leave some freedom for the Iraqis. Don’t put them on remote in the end.