The best short statement of the case for sticking it out that I have seen was made by a Marine major, Ben Connable, then heading back to his third tour in Iraq. Writing on the Op-Ed page of The Washington Post, Major Connable had this to say:
The precipitous withdrawal of US troops would almost certainly lead to a violent and destabilizing civil war…. The insurgency would turn into internecine violence, and Iraq would collapse into a true failed state. The fires of the Iraqi civil war would spread, and terrorists would find a new safe haven from which to launch attacks against our homeland.
That dire scenario strikes me as accurate, and I have no quarrel with Major Connable or anyone else who lays it out. What I do find offensive is the attempt by supporters of the war to come up late in the game with new reasons to justify going into Iraq in the first place.
This time three years ago, it will be recalled, the air was thick with warnings about weapons of mass destruction. If the US didn't strike soon, Saddam Hussein was sure to nuke us or gas us or set the plague on us. As it turned out, there were no weapons of mass destruction. Can't trust that Saddam Hussein, can you?
Even at this late date, I do not say — because I do not believe — that the administration knowingly and deliberately lied about WMDs to whip up support for the war. My hunch instead is that President Bush and his collaborators really believed that the WMDs were there. Or at least they considered that to be more likely than not. It suited their purposes to believe it. It helped sell the war. There was a good chance it was true. So no doubt it was.
Now, we are hearing something quite different from the war's supporters. Its justification is said to reside in the creation of a stable, democratic Iraq smack dab in the center of a historically volatile region, the Middle East.
There are two things to be said about that.
The first thing is that Iraq is never going to be Iowa.
We and the Iraqis will be extremely lucky if, before we leave, the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds have drawn the conclusion that coexistence is better than mayhem and have committed themselves to an electoral process no more flawed than those of many other countries. Let's hope, too, that Iraqi democracy does not turn out to mean an oppressive, Islamist regime determined to make life miserable for the country's Catholics.
The second thing is that creation of a shaky quasi-democratic system of governance, which is what we are likely to get at best, will hardly be sufficient retroactive justification for a war and insurgency that President Bush acknowledges have so far cost the lives of some 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
But, granting all that, I still agree with Major Connable. For the United States to pull out too soon, in response to domestic political considerations, would in the long run result in “more deployments, more desperate battles, and more death.” The harm we did going into Iraq should not be compounded by quitting prematurely.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
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