I believe you are arguing a tautology.
Personally, I'm not at all 'antiwar'... I'm anti-FAILURE.
And, I believe that the very best way to improve the US's strategic position in the region, and in the world as a whole, would be to pull out --- and let the Iraqis get on with the business of settling their OWN civil war.
Standing in the middle of a civil war, and having BOTH sides take pot shots at us, and USE US as an excuse for everything that is wrong in their country, is the HEIGHT OF IDIOCY.
We should declare victory (after all: Saddam is gone, just what we've wanted for all these years) and pull our forces out.
'Iraq' (that most artificial stiching-together of three separate and disparate provinces from the old Ottoman Empire, that not-sure-if-it-wants-to-be-a-single-country place) now is a 'Republic'.
And, just like Ben Franklin famously said after the US Constitution was written: "You have a Republic... if you can keep it."
It is now up to the locals to define their own destiny... maybe a Republic, maybe a loose federation of three separate States, maybe the new borders of Greater Iran and Greater Arabia/Jordan.
Either way, the civil war will define it... not anything we can do.
And, I also, though rather cynically, believe that it would be VERY MUCH IN THE AMERICAN NATIONAL INTEREST to have the 60% of 'Iraq' that is Shi'a, (and their main backer Shiite Iran, and it's ally Syria) face off with the 20% of 'Iraq' that is Sunni (and their Sunni backers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, etc.) The Kurds will stay friendly with us because they need the US to keep our other ally, Turkey, off of their backs while they get about the business of trying to achieve their long-held goal of a Kurdistani nation.
If the Islamic world turns in upon itself in religious conflict, it would be a very good thing for the West.
Opposition to the West would be neutralized by the more immediate concerns of internecine Islamic conflict... and, ultimately, the Islamic world might finally arrive at it's much-overdue Reformation --- the truce finally declared in the West between Catholics and Protestants that permitted the flowering of rational thought and moderation.
Standing in the middle and trying to *stop* this historic tide is INSANE. We should get out of the way and let it progress.
Or, does no one think strategically anymore? |
