InTheseTimes.com: Why Exiting Iraq Won't Be Easy

[Bucky]

It just gets worse and worse...

Why Exiting Iraq Won't Be Easy
Iraqis may hate the occupation, but they fear U.S. withdrawal
By Chris Toensing

Despite polls showing that majorities of Americans now believe the war was a mistake, Washington has no plans for ending the occupation of Iraq, either now or any time in the near future. Not one of the retired generals who came forth in mid-April to blast Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mishandling of the war is calling for a pullout. And top Democrats, such as Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, who are demanding a timetable, are still lonely voices in their own party.

While critics of the occupation focus their ire on Washington, there is similar paralysis at the top in Baghdad, despite widespread popular anger at the U.S. presence. Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser tied to the Shiite Dawa Party, is willing to talk about a "condition-based" withdrawal of some U.S. troops, but views a substantial U.S. military presence as the country's "insurance policy." His Sunni Arab counterparts in government agree. "Any withdrawal of the American forces now will lead the country into a civil war," says Tariq al-Hashimi, the leader of the Iraqi Islamist Party tapped to be a vice president in Iraq's new "national unity" government.

<snip>

"To a large extent the chaos is of U.S. making," says Iraqi scholar Isam al-Khafaji, who quit in disgust after serving two months in 2003 with the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, a group of returned expatriates who advised the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). In the summer of 2003, the CPA dissolved the heavily Sunni Arab officer corps of the Iraqi army, just as the U.S. military was beginning the first of its indiscriminate sweeps in the "Sunni triangle." Together with the vengeful "debaathification" policies pushed by Ahmad Chalabi and other former exiles, these policies convinced Sunni Arabs that they would be treated as the enemy in post-Saddam Iraq.

The CPA made its most damaging decision in July, when it allocated seats in the Iraqi Governing Council to Shiite Arabs, Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Turkmen and Christians according to estimates of their share of the population. For the first time, sectarian and ethnic affiliation became the formal organizing principle of Iraqi politics, exacerbating the tendency of Iraqi factions to pursue maximum benefits for their own community at the expense of Iraq as a nation. Sectarian and ethnic divisions deepened and widened with each "milestone" in the U.S.-sponsored transition to electoral democracy.

<snip>

The Shiite religious parties, in particular, prefer that the U.S. military stay until they consolidate their grip on the security apparatus. But even independent Iraqis, like Isam al-Khafaji, fear the intensified sectarian violence and the multi-sided melée of militias that might follow a U.S. pullout.

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The main point of the article is that there is no good solution here. The only decisions we can make now are based on how much they can limit the body count. I think this is why Murtha didn't call for a complete pull-out... just a drawback of troops to the periphery of the country, which should force the internal powers in Iraq to make peace with each other. But this insurgency and other drivers of domestic violence in Iraq is not running out of steam. It'll be another 3-5 years before they finally get tired of killing.

Man, I hate this reality stuff

[Vincardog]

1. Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, who are demanding a timetable, are

still lonely voices in their own party.

I call BS We are calling for withdrawal all the time. The "Leaders" want to stay and kill our children for generations.

I say sent the Fristians to fight their crusade.

[Bucky]

3. No, if we want to stop the violence, nationality shouldn't matter

I opposed the war and want to end the occupation because it's killing people. That's wrong because life is sacred. Whatever we do should be calculated to limit the number of deaths. It doesn't matter if the lives lost, the lives saved, or the lives sacrificed toward an eventual peace are American or Iraqi. They all count the same. If we lose another 500 troops and see another 5000 injured, but in the process save several thousand more lives... well, then that's what we have to do. Saving 1000 American troops in a way that gets 10,000 more Iraqi civilians killed is not an acceptable solution.

[Vincardog]

5. Bucky you assume staying is keeping Iraqis alive. I propose that

the American presence gets them killed. A few hundred thousand at least to date. How long do you want us to stay? How many of the do we have to kill before they will be safe?

Aside from what the original post stated the Majority of the Iraqi population wants us out now. Continuing the illegal occupation does no useful good.

[Bucky]

6. Actually that's not my opinion; it's the opinion of experts on Iraq

The sudden removal of US troops will escalate the killing. That's the point of the article. That probably wasn't true three years ago; but it is true now. The American presense isn't the only variable that gets people killed, rather the American presense unleashed the forces that are ramping up the violence. The removal of our troops won't stop the killing any more than removing an arrow from a wound stops the bleeding. I think we have a moral obligation to exit in a way that limits the bleeding. That means building safeguards, building working coalitions; it might even mean partitioning the country.

[Vincardog]

8. Every one has their own opinion. I believe the longer we occupy Iraq the

more killing there will be. The FAUX experts will say we have to stay the course. I want to know that the hell is the course? The English created IRAQ after they gave up on colonization after WWII. They insisted that the three dominant tribes get along. If they don't want to who the hell are we to insist that they do?

If it is violence you are against try looking at Darfur.

[Amonester]

2. "just a drawback of troops to the periphery of the country" is a...

good idea, in my humble opinion. Of course, a "complete" drawback of troops to the legal ground of THEIR country would be just, ummm... correct.

[FloridaPat]

4. We're there for the oil. Peak oil looms over the planet. Our gov't

has spent 50+ years laying the ground work to be the first country that gets to tap the oil regardless of how many other countries own citizens must suffer for our benefit to continue fueling our SUV's. Then there is the military "looser complex". We saw it in Vietnam. No party wants to be the one to hoist the white flag. Unamerican to loose a war - especially with the trillions dump into the DOD.

Vietnam pullout happened because the anti-war demonstrations were being heard after 50,000 dead US soldiers (about that) and 4 million dead Vietnamese citizens. It's time for a real solution to war. And having trials and sentencing nuts like * and Cheny and the PNAC groups is a good start. We are the problem in Iraq. It is an occupied country and we are not getting out until a gov't for the USA is installed. It also gives us a base over the whole region to stop any other country from getting the idea that their country & citizens comes first.

[mazzarro]

7. Pulling Out Will Become Inevitable Sometime

It is interesting that those who put out these type of articles never mention the same gloom and doom that was said of US pulling out of Vietnam - yet most of those predictions never materialized. IMO Iraqis will find ways of handling the situation without resorting to wholesale and wanton killing of each other. Don't get me wrong - there will be fighting but I doubt that it will turn out to be as disastrous as the US remaining there will eventually bring about. The country may even fracture if the US pulls out but it will evolve into something that nearly keeps the tribal groups from imposing on each other. The only issues that I foresee that are keeping the US there include lose of face and prestige; lose of longterm military bases; probably lose of the Kurdish allies; and most importantly lose of control of Iraqi oil. But whether the US and the world like it or not, I think an independent solution will be imposed by the Iraqis sooner or later,