An argument for withdrawal (Part One)

And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people.
- 2 Samuel 19:2

Recently, I was asked for my thoughts on whether we (the American military presence) should pull out of Iraq or not. Naturally, this became the subject for a blog. The argument that constitutes the following entry goes against my soldierly instinct of “no retreat” and so it was not easily that I settled upon this conclusion: we should pull out of Iraq, and we should do it soon.

The foundation of any effective argument is to understand and frame the problem correctly. In terms of understanding the problem, I do my best to stay up on current events through a variety of sources (from the WSJ to the NYT), and I’d like to think that my background as an army intelligence analyst contributes to a more informed position. In terms of framing the question, I think it is important to understand that there have been 3,521 American military members killed in Iraq since the war began (03/19/03); 25,830 American military seriously wounded (that is the official total, though depending ion the definition of “seriously wounded” NGO’s have placed the figure as high as 75,000); 65,000 – 70,000 Iraqi citizens reported killed in military actions since the war began (those numbers are reported deaths by military action, mind you); and a UN estimate of four million displaced Iraqis flooding into neighboring countries that are entirely unprepared to deal with the massive influx of people. With these kinds of numbers, the onus is not on the one wishing to end such actions as lead to these results; rather, it is the unpleasant obligation of those wishing to perpetuate the situation leading to these atrocities that must offer up many exceptionally good reasons to continue this tragically misguided and obviously failing war.

Let us first evaluate what the war effort in Iraq is accomplishing so as to clearly demonstrate my supposition that the effects of the war have been almost entirely disastrous. After this is established, we’ll consider the most common arguments used to argue that continuing the war is a good idea.

I’ve chosen four substantial effects of the war in Iraq with which to build my supposition.

1) The war in Iraq has made Iran more powerful than the Persians have been since the days of Xerxes. We eliminated the only legitimate opposition to Iran’s position as a regional super-power, while making ourselves too weak to check the growing Iranian nuclear threat. The Shiite government has found a ready ally in Iran, though not as strong an alliance as have the Shiite radical imams, death squads, and numerous partisan militias.

2) Al-Qaeda was on life support after September 11^th, but the war in Iraq has flooded their ranks and made them the most powerful terrorist network on the planet. Daniel Byman (Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University) reminds us in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs that there was a time when the whole world (ally or not) was hunting down Al-Qaeda wherever they were to be found. The terrorist network was almost entirely eliminated, but due almost exclusively to the war in Iraq, Al-Qaeda is now larger and more lethal than ever. The network exports increasingly savage tactics, holy warriors, money, and information into Kashmir, Chechnya, Somalia, and ironically back into Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda was formerly centered.

3) The war in Iraq has made Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr the most powerful man in Iraq. The gangland style execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein with the executioners chanting “Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!” says it all. He commands as many “allies” in the Iraqi parliament as any single party (bringing the government to a standstill last year when he demanded a boycott of the parliament). His armed followers have thoroughly infiltrated all official Iraqi security forces, control the streets of east Baghdad and the Shiite south, and fill the ranks of numerous death squads who assassinate Iraqi politicians with impunity and terrorize the Sunni minority. Moqtada al-Sadr was a junior cleric of no importance that the war in Iraq has made into a (if not the) actual national leader.

4) Prior to Iraq, Arab dictators were under a great deal of pressure to reform, but they now rest easy. I paraphrase from an excellent article by Marina Ottaway (Director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace): The failure of U.S. policy in Iraq has provided autocratic regimes in the Middle East a reprieve from the pressure to democratize, as long as they position themselves clearly on the side of Washington in its looming confrontation with Iran, Syria, and Shiite Islamists. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. loss of interest in draining the swamp of autocracy once it was confronted by large alligators of its own making such as Iran and its allies. Once again, autocracy is thriving – and so are the alligators.

These four effects of the war effort in Iraq are not all one could offer as support of my supposition. One could talk about the dramatically enhanced standing of China on the world stage as U.S. credibility the world over conversely plummets. One could talk about the obvious lack of military threat from the U.S. to check North Korean nuclear ambitions, the genocide in Darfur, or a hypothetical attack on our own homeland. One could talk about the army being stretched to a breaking point on many levels. One could talk about the still ballooning financial cost of the war $440,397,667,000 as of 06/17/07. One could talk about the ever increasing rate of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq as the partisan forces improve their tactics. – But I imagine the four cited effects of the war in Iraq should be enough to establish that the effects of the war are overwhelmingly negative.

[I will conclude this argument by discussing the more common arguments for continuing the war in the next blog entry.]