I’d like to draw your attention to a guest post by a commenter at The Moderate Voice. The post is a lament of the continuing presence of the United States in Iraq, largely on the grounds that it will inevitably become a second Iran. I’m not going to critique the post in detail and will limit my observations to just two.
First, it’s obvious to anyone with an elementary school grasp of mathematics and even a sketchy notion of Iraq that a democratic Iraq would have a Shi’ite plurality or even an outright majority. Is it inevitable that any country with a Shi’ite plurality will become “a second Iran”? Is a Shi’ite-led Iraq equivalent to an Iraq led by Moqtada al-Sadr?
Second, let’s accept for a moment that Iraq is on the path to becoming a second Iran, led by Moqtada al-Sadr, and that’s a horrible thing. Â How does U. S. withdrawal from Iraq put us in a better position to prevent that from happening?
On your first point the answer is we don’t know yet. Ali Sistani is still alive, but he’s older than God, while Muqtada Al Sadr is a relative kid. I think it will be very hard for Shi’ite Iraq to resist Iranian hegemony. Who will they turn to for help? The Saudis? The Syrians? They’ll be a smaller Shi’ite state bordering the world’s largest and most militant Shi’ite state, with Iran-allied Syria and a gaggle of Sunnni states surrounding them. I wouldn’t bet the mortgage money on them resisting Iran.
On the second point we also don’t know the answer. But we know this: ten years from now Iran will still be next door, and still be Shi’ite, and we will almost certainly be gone. So the question is whether we are serving any useful function now. Are we delaying the inevitable? Or by radicalizing the populace are we hastening the inevitable? And should we really still be sending men to kill and be killed when we don’t have any sort of answer to the above?
I think your answers are highly reasonable, M. Takhallus. As to your follow-up questions to the second, I don’t think the alternatives are either “staying the course” or an over-the-horizon force ready to return in case of trouble (not that you raised that alternative but some certainly are).
I think the alternatives are between committing to a long-term presence in Iraq that continues to make mistakes but also continues to learn and improve or leaving Iraq in all likelihood never to return.
If we elect the second of those alternatives, I am convinced that our next major intervention in the Middle East will be from 30,000 feet. I think that’s bad enough that we should all be willing to make some sacrifices to prevent it.
I’ve always thought the ‘over-the-horizon’ thing is mostly a dodge. Once we leave I don’t think we’ll go back in with any serious ground force. If say a year from now we redeploy to Kuwait it’s very hard for me to imagine that we will re-invade later. I think the American people will have had it.
More likely we’d be back to containment, using air power to punish misbehavior directed at us, (the all but inevitable harrassing katyushas) but otherwise letting things take their course. Air power won’t stop a civil war, if that’s where things are going. So the over-the-horizon concept is just face saving.
The problem is that we’re on our third type of war in 3 years: invasion, insurgency and now ethnic cleansing/civil war. The things that worked during the invasion didn’t work for the insurgency, and God only knows what you do to stop a civil war. But one thing you probably don’t do when facing a civil war is arm and train one faction — in this case the Shi’ites. Particularly when support for that faction will buy no loyalty down the road.
So, we have ‘stay the course,’ ‘over the horizon,’ ‘massive increase,’ or ‘cut and run’ as the options. Option 1 is probably doomed, option 2 is ineffectual face saving, option 3 is politically impossible, and option 4 only guarantees that things fall apart.
Say this for Mr. Bush: when he screws something up he doesn’t do it half way.
It certainly is a heckuva lot easier figuring out what went wrong than a way forward. This is basically what I was thinking about in my “wicked problems” post from a week or so ago. The favored U. S. approach to problem resolution is an engineering one: keep trying things until something works. The problems in the Middle East and Iraq in particular don’t respond well to that approach. Memories are long and people hold grudges. The missteps more than offset the positive ones.
You can’t just try another way because the entire landscape has changed at least partially in response to your last effort.
Dave Schuler:
Personally, I am not particularly concerned, if the next US intervention in the Middle East is from 30,000 feet.
I am concerned if it’s from zero (or even minus fifty) feet and several thousand miles away, via several hundred miles up.
How would that be for “changing the landscape”?
Dave, agree wholeheartedly with this: The problems in the Middle East and Iraq in particular don’t respond well to that approach. Memories are long and people hold grudges. Carrots are ignored, sticks simply create more radicals. The culture of grievance is pervasive. What’s most astounding is radical Islam’s wholesale refusal to come to terms with modernity. To me, that’s the biggest problem we have in comprehending radical Islam- they’re not modernists.