| Didn't we run this a day or two ago? |
By Edward Luttwak - New York Times
Chevy Chase, Md. - Many Americans now believe that the United States is depleting its military strength, diplomatic leverage and Treasury to pursue unrealistic aims in Iraq. They are right. Democracy seems to interest few Iraqis, given the widespread Shiite proclivity to follow unelected clerics, the Sunni rejection of the principle of majority rule, and the preference of many Kurds for tribe and clan over elected governments. Reconstruction was supposed to advance rapidly with surging oil export revenues, but is hardly gaining on the continuing destruction inflicted by sabotage and thievery. And in any case, it is unlikely that the new Iraqi interim government will be able to oversee meaningful elections in a country where its authority is more widely denied than recognized.
Yet few Americans are prepared to simply abandon Iraq. For one, they are rightly concerned that to do so would be a mortal blow to America's global credibility and encourage violent Islamists everywhere. An outright withdrawal would leave the interim government and its feeble forces of doubtful loyalty to face the attacks of vastly emboldened Baath regime loyalists, Sunni revanchists, local and foreign Islamist extremists and the ever-more numerous Shiite militias. The likely result would be the defection of the government's army, police and national guard members, followed by a swift collapse and then civil war. Worse might follow in the Middle East - it usually does - even to the point of invasions by Iran, Turkey and possibly others, initiating new cycles of repression and violence.
Bwahaahahaa, what a mellon, and the US is a big liberator eyh?
Thus the likely consequences of an American abandonment are so bleak that few Americans are even willing to contemplate it. This is a mistake: it is precisely because unpredictable mayhem is so predictable that the United States might be able to disengage from Iraq at little cost, or even perhaps advantageously. |