The costs of withdrawal from Iraq

Ellen Knickmeyer in the Washington Post this morning lays out the costs of withdrawing U. S. forces from Iraq:  an escalation of the violence there, orders of magnitude more killed than are being killed now, refugees fleeing the carnage, neighboring countries drawn into the conflict, the possibility of an entire region in upheaval.

I don’t honestly believe that U. S. forces can stop an Iraqi sectarian war but maintaining our troops there is the best chance we have for imposing some marginal level of control and, perhaps, preventing the conflagration from spreading.

Admittedly, this is a value judgment and a gamble, as are the other alternatives being presented.  It’s heartless of me to say it but the levels of casualties we’re taking in Iraq are very, very low.  More American soldiers died in some days in World War II than have died in the entire Iraq war to date.  Surely there is some small level of sacrifice that is worth preventing the thousands or hundred of thousands of additional deaths?

I can’t say that I think that such a position is politically sustainable.  Not with both Democrats and, increasingly, Republicans treating withdrawal of U. S. forces sooner rather than later as a foregone conclusion.

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