Re: "Oh sure, we can easily pull out. It's the mess that will ensue that will be difficult."
Maybe.... (Perhaps even on the order of Yugoslavia....)
Still, the 'mess' would be VERY GOOD for American and Western strategic interests!
In the short-term --- extremists would be pitted against each other, diverted from attacking our guys by the exigencies of their NEW CRISIS, the *expanded* inter-regional civil war in Iraq.
In the mid-term --- oil prices would fall globally as BOTH sides pumped full-out to try to keep their heads above water and finance their war efforts. (Saudi Arabia has *already* warned that they would pump full-out to lower oil prices to try to weaken the Iranians... deprive them of the money they would need to fight the Sunnis. Saudi Arabia has ALSO stated that it would step up it's support for the Sunni battles against the Shia, and so would many/most of the other Gulf Sunnis.)
In the long-term --- new, more stable political boundaries would be drawn through the territory of old 'Iraq', but both sets of extremists would lose massive amounts of their people's blood and national wealth, most likely disgracing the extremism causes and their allure on the region's streets, likely giving an opening to a new political respect for moderation and pluralism, possibly toppling both the corrupt Saud Monarchs, their extremist Whabbist Sunni supporters, and the Iranian Shiite Theocracy. Quite possibly not only will more Western-thinking governments emerge in the region... but the long-overdue Islamic Reformation will finally emerge.
(Just as it did in Western Europe centuries ago - birthed in the wasteful blood of generations of inter-religious civil warfare.) |
