This assumes that we have either the capacity to install a government capable of sustaining itself without our continuous support or the political will to maintain an army of occupation in Iraq for an extended period of time, meaning not months, but years and possibly decades.
"Getting it all" might prove less than advantageous if what we get turns out to be a major headache, as long term commitments in unstable countries often prove to be.
If we were running Iraq, the problem of what to do with those annoying Kurds would be our problem. The problem of what to do with those annoying Shiites (more than half the population, for the democratically minded) becomes ours. These problems will not be resolved in days or years. Do we want to deal with them?
Those devoted to the study of military tactics and hardware often overlook the fact that wars are not fought to win battles or to destroy opposing forces. They are fought to attain political objectives. It is possible, if one selects a political objective that is sufficiently difficult to achieve, to win every battle and still lose the war. We should know this; it is what we did in Vietnam.
In this scenario our objective would be the installation of a stable, self-sustaining, pro-western government in Iraq. This is probably not the easiest objective to attain. If we do invade - and I am in no way convinced that we should - I think it would be more reasonable to take the much more limited objective of removing or greatly reducing Iraq's ability to threaten us or anyone else. This could be achieved by simply destroying all weapons and weapons-production technology, then getting out and letting the place descend into chaos on its own. It would certainly become a mess, and whatever government arises will probably hate us, but this is likely to be the case in any event.
I am not convinced that a major military base in the region would necessarily be a huge asset. To the extent that it would commit us to the continuing sustenance of an unstable government, it might be a liability. If we do invade Iraq, we will have to do it without land bases or with very limited use of them: our allies in the area are understandably reluctant to provide bases for an operation that they see as not in accordance with their interests. If we succeed, it will demonstrate that we do not need a major military base to perform such operations. If we fail, we won't have the base in any case. |
