Hi michael97123; It's easy enough to pull out of Iraq. First you announce elections. In order to reduce violence, you specify that ALL parties, Islamic or Baathist included, are invited, and that the UN, not the US, will be responsible for overseeing the elections.
If the result is a bloody civil war, then so be it. What we're already looking in the face is the tiny beginnings of a bloody civil war. If the result is a government that we hate, then so be it, we do the diplomacy from 30,000 feet thing. If the result is a government that we can live with, then so be it. But there is no need for our troops to remain in Iraq, where the locals can pick them off at a steadily increasing pace, and where they steadily anger the locals.
Another alternative is to pick a strongman and make him the "temporary" ruler of Iraq. Support him with air power, but get our troops away from the policing duties. If he survives (unlikely but possible), then so be it. Maybe he has elections, maybe not. Maybe we can influence him from 30,000 feet, maybe not, so be it.
What we have to do is to forget the childish notion that the future of Iraq is in our hands. It is not in our power to control Iraq, not and remain a civilized nation.
Like I said before the war, if you follow Israel's foreign policy (occupation of Arab countries), you end up with Israel's foreign policy problems (endless war, and, eventually, terror in your homeland). This is the simple truth regardless of the morality of Israel's position. It's just what happens when you do what Israel's has done.
But I doubt that we want to get involved in a splitting up of Iraq. While most of our troubles with rebellion are in the "triangle", it's not true that we would be left alone in the other parts of Iraq. First of all, there are a lot of Iraqis who truly are nationalistic for Iraq, rather than supporters of Kurds of Shiites or whatever. Those Iraqis, and they fall all over the country, will attack us wherever in Iraq we remain, just like the British were attacked in Northern Ireland. Nor are the regions of Iraq neatly divided into governable regions. It's all one country.
Fully blockading the Sunni regions would be an act of genocide comparable to the slaughters of the 20th century.
-- Carl |
