Finishing the Job
By Frederick W. Kagan; February 2, 2006
America has an
obligation to remain in Iraq until it has helped establish a peaceful, stable
democracy there. The rest of the civilized world, especially the Muslim world,
has a vital interest in supporting this endeavor. The wise consideration of the
US military presence in Iraq can only take place on the basis of these two
facts. Such a consideration reveals the extreme dangers that will result from a
premature withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and from the establishment of
any artificial time-line for such a withdrawal.
The debate over the
American presence in Iraq has been clouded for too long by the debate over
President Geroge W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the first place.
Resentment of that decision has too easily flowed into resentment of the
continued US presence and therefore into unreflective demands for an immediate
US withdrawal. This phenomenon has taken place within the US and around the
world.
But evaluating the
decision to invade Iraq cannot inform the discussion about when to leave. The
nascent Iraqi democracy is under severe attack from internal and external
forces. Its own troops are not yet ready to assume responsibility for defending
it, and will not be ready to do so for some time. Were America to withdraw its
forces prematurely, there is a great danger that the Iraqi government would
succumb to these attacks in one of several ways.
By far the most
likely manner of collapse would be a civil war among Iraq's major ethnic and
sectarian groups: Sunni Arab against Shi'ite Arab in the first instance, possibly
expanding into a struggle that involves the Kurds as well. This is a scenario
that no Muslim could wish for, still less any non-Muslim. Civil war among Arabs
is an intolerable prospect--as is civil war within any people. The possibility
that Iraq's neighbors might involve themselves in such a struggle is even more
intolerable, raising as it does the specter of an intra-Arab or even
Arab-Turkish-Persian conflict on a much larger scale. Rather than demanding an
action that would make such strife more likely, the Muslim world should unite
in demanding that the US remain as long as necessary in order to prevent it.
The non-Muslim
world has at least as great an interest in preventing such a disaster. Apart
from the humanitarian consideration that such a conflict must be defused rather
than courted, the collapse of Iraq's infant government would almost certainly
create the sort of chaos in which al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations
thrive. America drove the radical Taliban regime from power in Afghanistan to
deny al-Qaeda the resources of that impoverished and war-wracked land. It would
be the height of folly to allow al-Qaeda to trade a poverty-stricken desolate
base for one that floats on one of the world's largest seas of oil. It is in
the interest of no one outside of al-Qaeda and its allies for such a thing to
happen.
A more reasonable
argument for the immediate or rapid withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is that
those forces are themselves the problem. The proud Iraqi people, it is said,
naturally resent the presence of foreign troops on their soil. If only those
troops were removed, so this logic goes, the violence would subside and Iraq
would be at peace. Alas, it is not so.
It is not merely
that there is no proof to support this assertion; there is actually clear proof
to the contrary. Iraq has been most peaceful when there were more American
troops in the country rather than fewer, as during the election cycles. Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has openly declared his intention
of starting a sectarian war between Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs in order to
"awaken" the Sunnis. His stated method to accomplish this goal has
been to attack Shi'ite Arabs in Iraq indiscriminately. He and his supporters
have done so on many occasions, targeting Shi'ite Arab leaders and common
people with car bombs, suicide bombs and other attacks. Moreover, it is clear
that such tactics are not confined to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Sunni Arab
rejectionists have attacked Sunni Arabs who participate in the political process.
Radical Shi'ite Arab organizations and individuals have retaliated with attacks
against Sunni Arabs in Iraq.
There is absolutely
no reason to imagine that this violence would cease when the Americans leave.
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that a premature withdrawal
would increase the scope and scale of these sectarian attacks, the prevention
of which has been a significant objective of the US presence all along.
There are other
reasons for a speedy American withdrawal, having to do with pressures on the
American military and the possibility of waning domestic support for this
conflict. We must all hope that these pressures abate or are contained.
American forces should withdraw from Iraq only when they have accomplished
their goal: the establishment of a peaceful, stable, and democratic Iraqi
state. No one who wishes well to the Iraqi people, the Arab and Muslim
communities, and the peoples of the Middle East in general should wish for any
other outcome.
Frederick W.
Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23817,filter.all/pub_detail.asp