• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Iraq's future

MarkOttawa

Army.ca Fixture
Inactive
Fallen Comrade
Reaction score
146
Points
710
Results of a US war game:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071601680.html

If U.S. combat forces withdraw from Iraq in the near future, three developments would be likely to unfold. Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations.

That was the conclusion reached in recent "war games" exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic," said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But "it will be ugly."

In making the case for a continued U.S. troop presence, President Bush has offered far more dire forecasts, arguing that al-Qaeda or Iran -- or both -- would take over Iraq after a "precipitous withdrawal" of U.S. forces. Al-Qaeda, he said recently, would "be able to recruit better and raise more money from which to launch their objectives" of attacking the U.S. homeland. War opponents in Congress counter that Bush's talk about al-Qaeda is overblown fear-mongering and that nothing could be worse than the present situation.

Increasingly, the Washington debate over when U.S. forces should leave is centering on what would happen once they do. The U.S. military, aware of this political battlefield, has been quietly exploring scenarios of a reduced troop presence, performing role-playing exercises and studying historical parallels. Would the Iraqi government find its way, or would the country divide along sectarian lines? Would al-Qaeda take over? Would Iran? Would U.S. security improve or deteriorate? Does the answer depend on when, how and how many U.S. troops depart?

Some military officers contend that, regardless of whether Iraq breaks apart or outside actors seek to take over after a U.S. pullout, ever greater carnage is inevitable. "The water-cooler chat I hear most often . . . is that there is going to be an outbreak of violence when we leave that makes the [current] instability look like a church picnic," said an officer who has served in Iraq.

However, just as few envisioned the long Iraq war, now in its fifth year, or the many setbacks along the way, there are no firm conclusions regarding the consequences of a reduction in U.S. troops. A senior administration official closely involved in Iraq policy imagines a vast internecine slaughter as Iraq descends into chaos but cautions that it is impossible to know the outcome. "We've got to be very modest about our predictive capabilities," the official said...

Anne Applebaum, a very bright columnist, indicates the complication:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071601289.html

Hillary Clinton has a three-point plan; Barack Obama has a "move the soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan" plan [emphasis added]. House Democrats have a plan to take most troops out by next March; Senate Democrats have a plan to take them out by April. Some Senate Republicans want the president to shrink the size of the U.S. military in Iraq; other Senate Republicans want to let the surge run its course. Search the Web, listen to the radio and watch the news, and you can hear people arguing that if only we had more troops, fewer troops or no troops at all, everything would be okay again.

What is missing from this conversation is a dose of humility. More to the point, what is missing is the recognition that every single one of these plans contains the seeds of potential disaster, even catastrophe.

More troops? I hardly need to elaborate on what's wrong with that plan, since so many in Congress do so every day. But for the record, I'll repeat the obvious: More troops means more American casualties, maybe many more casualties. Worse, the very presence of American soldiers creates strife in some parts of Iraq -- angering Iraqis, motivating al-Qaeda, sparking violence. Besides, we've tried the surge, and the surge hasn't brought the results we wanted. And, anyway, the surge simply can't be maintained, let alone expanded: There aren't that many more troops to send, even if we wanted to send them.

Fewer troops? This plan sounds like a reasonable compromise: neither surge nor cut-and-run, just leaving a few guys on the ground to train the Iraqis, guard the border and fight the terrorists. It also sounds a touch naive: So, in the midst of a vast civil war, small groups of Americans will withdraw to some neutral outposts and announce that they would no longer like to be shot at, please? Both "guarding the border" and "fighting terrorism" are hard to do effectively without involving ourselves in wider political and ethnic struggles.

There is also trouble with the "train the Iraqis" part of the plan, as Stephen Biddle spelled out in The Post last week, since "training Iraqis" invariably puts us in the middle of military conflict. Besides, fewer Americans could mean more Iraqi violence; more Iraqi violence could mean more American casualties -- not to mention more Iraqi casualties -- which defeats the purpose of the plan altogether.

No troops? Though deeply appealing to the "we told you so" crowd, this plan is clothed in the greatest degree of hypocrisy. How many of the people who clamor for intervention in Darfur will also be clamoring to rush back into Iraq when full-scale ethnic cleansing starts taking place [emphasis added]? How many will take responsibility for the victims of genocide? I'm not saying there will be such a catastrophe, but there could be: Mass ethnic murders have certainly been carried out in Iraq before. Other possibilities include the creation of an Iranian puppet state or an al-Qaeda outlaw state; or there might merely be a regional war involving, say, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, just for starters, and maybe Israel and the Gaza Strip as well. Perhaps these things would never have happened if we hadn't gone there in the first place -- but if we leave, we'll be morally responsible...

And what would happen in Afstan in NATO pulled out too soon?

Mark
Ottawa
 
The thing that scares me about it is if all is said and done, Harper decides to pull us out in Feb. '09 and who's to say there won't be a UN mission after the U.S. pulls out.  We move from one end to the other. Just a thought...
 
The future is rather sad, since there are so many powerful forces agitating for the West to abandon the "purple finger" strategy and the people of Iraq. This will only embolden our enemies, and I suspect that future historians will be writing about OIF II or Persian Gulf War III (or more generally of the "On and Off War" where each retreat by the West emboldened and empowered radical Islam and required an even stronger response from the West.)

Two things I would have liked to see done:

Formulate Iraq as a Federal State, the three parts of Iraq would be able to combine their strengths for common issues like foreign relations and defence, while dealing with internal issues in the way that best suited them. "Kurdistan" is the model of this.

Have the US Marines train the Iraqi army. Treating every Iraqi soldier as part of "The Few, The Proud" might have fostered a true sense of Iraqi unity.

Still, there are plenty of indicators that Iraq is better off overall (economic growth, improved living conditions outside specific areas targetted by the "insurgents" ,introduction of consensual democratic government, even if only for a short time), and I believe that if the Administration had the will to ignore the nay sayers they could set the stage for victory (after all, Iran is getting close to cracking, and there are few other significant State powers willing or able to continue the fight). Despite the rhetoric, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and their imitators are ultimately parasites that con only achieve maximum effect feeding on on State power. Without a State sponsor, these movements will devolve into criminal gangs. As a historical analogy, the end of the 100 year's war saw large numbers of unemployed mercenaries wandering the continent acting as criminal bands since there were no paymasters to keep them employed.
 
Back
Top