Could someone please explain to me why the various insurgent groups in Iraq will suddenly stop murdering their fellow-citizens, blowing them up with bombs, and gassing them just because American troops have left Iraq? Will they do these things less or more if there are fewer American troops in Iraq?
As usual in my “point of information” posts, I’m really looking for an explanation, preferably with evidence.
They won’t, of course, but we won’t care. The media will move on when the American forces leave. They’ll be covering Iraq from Kuwait. And we won’t be any more concerned than we are with any of the many worldwide slaughters under way. Iraq will become Darfur — we’ll make noises and do nothing and the few still paying attention will spend their time assigning blame. We will look away, just like we did when North Vietnam took the south and when Pol Pot massacred his own people.
I just received the latest issue of “Foreign Affairs” in the mail and one of the lead articles discusses Iraq and, coincidentally, partially answers your query:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86201/james-d-fearon/iraq-s-civil-war.html
I don’t agree with everything, but the author makes some compelling arguments.
I, too, agree with much of what Fearon has to say but I don’t think it answers my question. I also think that Fearon has a lot of what I’ve been thinking of as the “wishful thinking school of American diplomacy” i.e. the notion that we can leave and then manage everything perfectly (or even minorly to our advantage) from far away. So, for example, the summary blurb says:
The article provides no hints on how that might come to pass. Or Fearon writes:
the implication being that they will change quickly when they depart. He presents no evidence for this. Again Fearon writes:
He fails to make any kind of case as to why that should be or historical examples that support the claim.
Don’t mistake these comments as my asserting that Mr. Bush’s objectives are achievable. I don’t think they are in a timeframe that’s politically possible in the United States.
Of course the US intervention set in motion the ethnic bloodbath.
I see no responsibility taken here by the posters or the links.
An unplanned on insurgency Bush was warned about but dismissed
because of trust in the neocons’ scenario of flowers in the machine guns.
This is Imperial Hubris and the lesson unlearned becasue of it.
The Empire must be dismantled and will be.
Dave, seriously?
Ok:
1) It’s won’t stop the attacks. The attacks will, in fact, probably get worse once we leave.
2) It’s also worth pointing out that us being there isn’t stopping the attacks either – the majority opinion seems to be that our presence is basically just slowing down what’s already happening.
3) That being the case, it seems reasonable to suggest that, with or without us there, things will eventually reach some terminally bad point of all-out civil war. Once this occurs the country will partition, probably with some degree of ethnic cleansing, and the various pieces will begin to rebuild.
4) If things are going to hell anyway, the question of stay vs. go boils down to: is what we’re spending in American lives and money worth delaying – not stopping – what’s going on?
5) And the reasoning of an increasing number of people, at all levels of society, seems to be: no, it’s not worth it.
There’s your answer. Not pretty, not pleasant, but an essentially sound explanation of what’s going on with people pushing the US to leave Iraq.
Dave,
I agree his prescriptions aren’t that well thought out or explained, but his assessment of the current situation is pretty good. I was especially struck by his arguments on how factionalism within factions tends to prolong conflict and make solutions more difficult to achieve, either through force or negotiation.
Overall, he seems to argue that we should essentially feed the conflict (what he terms balancing) to ensure no single power can emerge with an ultimate victory and hope for an eventual settled peace. That’s a pretty big hope, and I disagree with his argument that such a course of action is more moral than picking a side and ensuring its domination, but that’s an arguable point.
He also discussed the military coup option, which I talked about some months ago, and I agree that for one to be successful the military must have the proper leadership and institutional loyalty – something the USA has been working hard at with mixed results. I predicted that one of our secret options was exactly the military coup he suggested.
In answer to the questions in your post:
#1: I see few arguing that factional fighting will stop if/when American troops leave. Those that do are completely out of touch with reality in my opinion. The fighting is self-sustaining and occurs not because of, but in spite of, US efforts to stop it.
#2: Fearon’s article basically says that fighting will continue and probably increase as ethnic/sectarian cleansing occurs. Once that’s finished, internecine conflict within the larger factions will predominate.
Personally, I see some levels of conflict in certain areas diminishing greatly after the US leaves, but that will be confined to sectarian strongholds like Anbar where the majority of conflict is directed at Americans. In places like Baghdad and other mixed areas the conflict could be quite severe, though I would expect some vulnerable populations will evacuate those areas and “cleanse” themselves.
Ultimately, though, what will happen will vary depending on the specific province/city/neighborhood, so it’s hard to extrapolate and/or average the level of violence across the entire country. I’m inherently skeptical any such calculus would be accurate or germane although people have a tendency to use such comparisons as a basis for grand predictions. And what metrics should we use to gauge the violence? Body counts? Number of violent incidents?
Chris:
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I mostly agree with your assessment except for this
My concern is that, in the absence of outside intervention, that the pieces will partition, those pieces will partition, and so on. It’s likely that will spread outside Iraq’s borders and invite outside intervention from the neighbors.
Andy:
You must be looking in different places than I am. I can point to any number of journalists, Middle East scholars, and U. S. legislators who are saying exactly that. They tend not to explain the mechanism.
My only conjectures are that either it’s 1) wishful thinking or 2) they’re stuck thinking of what’s going on in Iraq as a war of national liberation. I think it is—perhaps 5%. The rest is something very different which doesn’t appear to me to be self-limiting.
bq. My concern is that, in the absence of outside intervention, that the pieces will partition, those pieces will partition, and so on. It’s likely that will spread outside Iraq’s borders and invite outside intervention from the neighbors.
That is possible, although I think the neighbors will act as a catalyst for consolidation along sectarian lines (Iran unifying the Shia, etc.), rather than the fuel-on-the-fire scenario that many people seem afraid of.
That said, if you do buy the premise that civil war is inevitable, then it really doesn’t matter what happens once it occurs – you’re still going to call for withdrawal, because our troops dying isn’t gonna change the final outcome, whatever that might be.
They may be partly right, and that’s one of the larger points I tried to make above. The conflict is complex in many ways, and in some cases, in certain areas, fighting will decrease and perhaps cease when American troops leave. These areas are primarily the Sunni insurgent areas like Anbar. Other areas are likely to see a large increase in violence. In many ways, the “all politics is local” cliche can be amended to “all violence is local” in the case of Iraq. I’m sure those few (from my perspective) that think violence will decrease will point to places like Anbar when the inevitable pullout does occur. Likewise, those on the other side will point to mixed areas where violence is likely to increase. Confirmation bias strikes again.
There is a tendency in American political and policy circles to deconstruct complex issues and events like the civil war and insurgency in Iraq into neatly package analysis, but often the required generalizations are deeply skewed by personal bias. Hence it’s no surprise such divergent viewpoints emerge from the same basic set of data. I guess it’s to be expected though – a reasoned national discussion on Iraq is unrealistic when Anna Nicole isn’t yet buried and her baby’s father remains unclear – the media does have it’s priorities after all.
Sorry, feeling rather cynical this evening.
No, the US leaving won’t stop the violence.
Who cares? No US troops in Iraq = no US troops dying in Iraq. Not to mention the astronomical amount of money it’s costing – the estimate I’ve seen is that this mess will have cost a trillion dollars by the time it’s over.
I can think of much worthier causes to use that amount of money on than helping a bunch of mediaeval barbarians, every one of whom would rather the US didn’t exist – or the rest of the West for that matter.
Of course, while they are killing each other they aren’t killing us.
“There is a tendency in American political and policy circles to deconstruct complex issues and events like the civil war and insurgency in Iraq into neatly package analysis, but often the required generalizations are deeply skewed by personal bias.”
There is an even greater tendency to a priori assume the US has a right
to intervene in the Middle East in spite of the fact it has, along with an
imperialist “imperative”based on greed, the above named tendency,(itself caused largely by provincial ignorance about the region) replete with an automatically anti-Islamic, pro-Israeli bias guaranteed for defeat.
Ken,
The legitimacy of the initial invasion is not germane to the discussion here. I find it particularly interesting that when confronted with a discussion on the realities and consequences of withdrawal, those advocating it most strongly, such as yourself, instead prefer to conduct what amounts to a rehashed historical debate on the wisdom/legality/morality of the initial invasion and put forth platitudes about how evil Bush/Cheney/America or what have you is.
The invasion happened, the troops are there, they won’t be forever. So, what do YOU think will happen when withdrawal comes? I’m anxiously awaiting your Zionist conspiracy theory.