[QUOTE=Leaper]
I’m open to the idea that we’re laying groundwork for a stabler country, or keeping insurgents from feeding the roasted flesh of their brutally slain victims to innocent Iraqis or whatever. And maybe I expect that the majority of replies say we aren’t doing any good there - or at least, not enough to justify the costs.
[/QUOTE]
One obvious question to ask is, have things gotten better, or worse, in Iraq under U.S. occupation?
The answer is, of course, worse. They’re worse now than they were in July 2006, when they were worse than in July 2005. Ditto the July 2005 and July 2004, and July 2004 and July 2003, comparisons.
It’s hard to imagine a more intensive last, best shot than the ‘surge,’ but things certainly appear to have continued to worsen during the past six months. While there’s no way to prove that we can’t somehow improve things by staying, there’s certainly no evidence to show we can. Like it or not, the established track record is the only reasonable guide to future expectations under a continued U.S. occupation.
Then there’s the question, “won’t there be a bloodbath when we leave?” We don’t know for sure, but it’s reasonable to expect that the immediate aftermath of our departure will be a considerable escalation of the internecine violence that’s already taking place.
So if we withdraw over the next year, Iraq in 2009 will probably be a bloodier place than Iraq would be in 2009 if we stay.
The problem is, that’s a useless comparison because, even as things continue to go to hell in a handbasket under our occupation, the logic of this comparison forces us to stay indefinitely and ride this clusterfuck all the way down.
We will have to leave sometime. The appropriate comparison is leaving in year X v. Year Y - what happens in Year X+1 v. Year Y+1?
For instance, posit two choices: one in which we withdraw over the next year (2007-08) and another where we withdraw over the 2013-14 period. Will things in Iraq be better in 2015 as a result of our having stayed until 2014 than they would have been in 2009 if we’d pulled out the last combat troops in 2008?
The answer is, of course not. Since things will be worse in Iraq in 2013 than they are now if we stay, we must expect that the bloodbath of 2015 if we withdraw in 2013-14 will be worse than the bloodbath of 2009 if we withdraw over the next year.
And, I should add, if we stay in Iraq for another six years, our military capacity will continue to degrade, and our ability to do an effective intervention from ‘over the horizon’ if things turn into outright genocide will be far worse in 2015 than it would be in 2009.
Another factor is that the Iraqi security forces we’ve been training have largely been Shi’ite and Kurd. The longer we stay, the more likely it will be that the Shi’ites will have the strength to inflict a genocidal outcome on the Sunnis.
Also, at present, the Iraqi security forces lack heavy armaments, which is why the current civil war is being fought mostly with guns and car bombs. Eventually we’ll run out of excuses for not arming the ‘government’ sufficiently to protect their borders from invasion, which would mean we’d also be arming them for a much more effective war against the Sunni minority. If we pull out now, the Shi’ites will have limited ability to invade heavily Sunni areas, and vice versa. There will be areas of fighting, but also areas of safety.