One More Year in Iraq....And Not a Day More
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the biggest foreign policy mistake in the nation's history. Sensible and informed voices on both sides of the political aisle warned the Bush administration not to open up this can of worms, to no avail. Now, we are stuck in a brutal and senseless quagmire that is likely to go on for many years if somebody doesn't put their foot down.
There are obviously no easy answers here. There is certainly merit to the neo-conservative claims that leaving Iraq prematurely could make a bad situation considerably worse. Unfortunately, things are getting considerably worse even with U.S. troops operating at full capacity in Iraq. A total absence of U.S. troops would likely accelerate the descent to all-out civil war that could spread throughout the Middle East, but at this point that shouldn't be America's problem. I have long resisted the idea of troop withdrawal out of a sense of duty to the Iraqis whose government we toppled. But multiple democratic elections later, we have to allow this new government to proceed the same as any other democratically-elected government proceeds...through the good and the bad.
It's also become abundantly clear that the Iraqi Security Forces need a serious motivational kick in the ass. After 2 1/2 years, very few ISF battallions are combat-ready, in comparison to American military battallions ready for combat in six months. Clearly there were plenty of logistical and cultural t's to cross and i's to dot with Iraqi's ISF, but it's become abundantly clear that the Iraqis have little incentive to be self-sufficient as long as they have the coalition force's "welfare army" to lean on. It's mind-blowing that the same domestic conservative voices preaching "self-sufficiency" when it comes to poor people at home refuse to apply the same premise to an Iraqi population that refuses to takes it own security seriously.
Setting a rigid timeline for withdrawal sends a much-needed "get your shit together" message to the government and security forces of Iraq. I'm not optimistic that they'll be able to avoid a bloody and long-term civil war, but there's little reason for the U.S. troops and taxpayers to finance a continued American presence in a sovereign state's internal conflict. This may sound ethically self-serving considering the U.S. is responsible for fueling Iraq's internal conflict, and it probably is. But the needless loss of thousands more American lives in the name of nationalism and dumb American pride is even more ethically self-serving.
Even if the bottom falls out in the next year in Iraq, we should hold firm to our pullout deadline of Easter 2007. When you're in a hole, you cannot keep digging......a common sense philosophy that was too difficult for America to accept during Vietnam, but one we have to accept more than 30 years later.
There are obviously no easy answers here. There is certainly merit to the neo-conservative claims that leaving Iraq prematurely could make a bad situation considerably worse. Unfortunately, things are getting considerably worse even with U.S. troops operating at full capacity in Iraq. A total absence of U.S. troops would likely accelerate the descent to all-out civil war that could spread throughout the Middle East, but at this point that shouldn't be America's problem. I have long resisted the idea of troop withdrawal out of a sense of duty to the Iraqis whose government we toppled. But multiple democratic elections later, we have to allow this new government to proceed the same as any other democratically-elected government proceeds...through the good and the bad.
It's also become abundantly clear that the Iraqi Security Forces need a serious motivational kick in the ass. After 2 1/2 years, very few ISF battallions are combat-ready, in comparison to American military battallions ready for combat in six months. Clearly there were plenty of logistical and cultural t's to cross and i's to dot with Iraqi's ISF, but it's become abundantly clear that the Iraqis have little incentive to be self-sufficient as long as they have the coalition force's "welfare army" to lean on. It's mind-blowing that the same domestic conservative voices preaching "self-sufficiency" when it comes to poor people at home refuse to apply the same premise to an Iraqi population that refuses to takes it own security seriously.
Setting a rigid timeline for withdrawal sends a much-needed "get your shit together" message to the government and security forces of Iraq. I'm not optimistic that they'll be able to avoid a bloody and long-term civil war, but there's little reason for the U.S. troops and taxpayers to finance a continued American presence in a sovereign state's internal conflict. This may sound ethically self-serving considering the U.S. is responsible for fueling Iraq's internal conflict, and it probably is. But the needless loss of thousands more American lives in the name of nationalism and dumb American pride is even more ethically self-serving.
Even if the bottom falls out in the next year in Iraq, we should hold firm to our pullout deadline of Easter 2007. When you're in a hole, you cannot keep digging......a common sense philosophy that was too difficult for America to accept during Vietnam, but one we have to accept more than 30 years later.
posted by Mark at 6:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home