I don’t write a lot about the Iraq war—because I don’t have a good understanding of what we’re trying to do there or how well it’s working—but I think the situation is pretty screwed up. However, one of the things that worries me most about the Democratic sweep back into Congress is that they’ll screw up Iraq too, but in a new and different way.
I am concerned, in particular, that our enemies will be emboldened if we leave the area without a clear victory. I’ve heard that when President Ronald Reagan pulled our troops out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks was bombed, a lot of our potential enemies in the region saw that as proof that the United States would back down if they suffered enough casualties.
According to Mark Bowden in Black Hawk Down, Somali warlords in Mogadishu specifically planned to pin down and kill a bunch of American soldiers, even at great cost to their own forces, because they were pretty sure it would create pressure for President Bill Clinton to remove our forces from the area.
If we let our enemies do that to us again in Iraq, we’ll be sending them a message that violent opposition to U.S. interests is a strategy that works. We will be rewarding them for killing our troops.
On the other hand, it’s hard for me to disagree with what Senator Carl Levin said at a recent press conference, especially the second quoted paragraph:
“Most Democrats share the view that we should pressure the White House to commence the phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq in four to six months — to begin that phased redeployment, and thereby to make it clear to the Iraqis that our presence is not open-ended and that they must take and make the necessary political compromises to preserve Iraq as a nation,” Levin said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves.
“They, and they alone, are going to decide whether they’re going to have a nation or whether they’re going to have an all-out civil war,” he said. “We have given them the opportunity, at huge cost of blood and treasure, to have a nation, should they choose it. But it is up to them, not us, not our brave and valiant troops — it’s up to the Iraqi leadership: Do they want a civil war or do they want a nation?”
It seems our choices are to leave and appear weak or to stay and keep paying the price in blood. These are not good choices.
Maybe we’ll luck out. Maybe our talk of a phased deployment will embolden the Iraqis to step up and pay the price to stop the violence.
We could use a bit of luck right now.
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