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I agree.
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It was a bad assumption, of course, and they had plenty of warning about this.
But that aside, they didn’t invite us in; we invited us in. Consequently, we’ve taken on a responsibility to the Iraqi people that is not negated by the invalidity of the assumption.
- A lot of that surely has to do with our response. We didn’t need to be in Fallujah in the first place; I can add some links about our policy turnabout there that led to the deaths of last week later if it’s germane. But once it happened, we could have simply cordoned off the town, and let it stew in its own juices, rather than force our way back in.
Similarly, after last Sunday’s uprising by al-Sadr’s supporters, we could have backed off and sent him a message saying, “we’ll release your aide and let you re-open your newspaper if you have your militia stand down.” Instead, we went in with guns blazing.
In these exchanges, we seem to have lost sight of the Last Remaining Rationale for the war: that we’re here to liberate Iraq and bring a better day to its people. We can’t outgun them, so we have to stay out of battles we can’t win (in the broader sense as well as the immediate sense), even if it means backing down sometimes.
- There’s a continuum of possibilities for Iraq after we pull out. Western-style democracy is off the menu, I agree. But just because of that, should be abandon them to civil war and chaos, if we can help bring about a better outcome than that?
There are many things worse than dictators, and civil disorder is among them. ISTM our last, best chance is to put the ball in Sistani’s lap, to listen to him, do what he says, and thereby promote a reasonably moderate Shi’ite-controlled Iraq. With any luck, the Shi’ites will at least be able to hold most of Iraq together as a nation. But what we don’t have any right to do if we can prevent it is to let Iraq turn into a failed state, a set of lines on the map that no longer mean anything. Not only would that leave the Iraqis much worse off than they were under Saddam, but failed states (as pretty much everyone in the field, including Condi, acknowledge) are terrorist incubators. To let that happen would leave us in greater danger than we were two years ago.
So even if we can’t bring democracy to Iraq, we’ve still got business there that we can’t shirk, for their benefit and for our own.
And to shirk our obligations to Iraq simply because we see the election here as more important shows a truly warped value system.
On preview, I see a lot of new comments, too many to respond to here. But one historical correction: LBJ didn’t pull out of Vietnam. If he had, Nixon wouldn’t have still been bombing the place in December 1972.
But this is an interesting turnabout, as yojimbo points out: we antiwar types used to be accused by the righties around here (and in the larger world) about not caring about the Iraqis. (But we had plenty of justification: first, Iraq was then one nation of many that we didn’t have to invade, and second, occupation was going to be a bitch, and might result in a worse outcome than Saddam. Now, Iraq is the one nation we have invaded, which obligates us to a much greater degree to care about them.) Funny how the righties are now defending O’Reilly’s suggestion that we bail out. Don’t you guys care about Iraqis?
Sure, I’d like to see an orderly withdrawal: like Kerry said long ago, how do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake? But if there’s still a realistic chance that we can leave someone in control who can stay in control, it will avert the worst outcomes, and we’re obligated to see it through at least that far.