Chris,
Perhaps I am wrong. Won't be the first time, and wouldn't be the last. But when I said that there would be troops in Iraq for at least a few more years, what I meant was (a) we are not just going to put all of the military personnel on planes and fly them out of there ASAP, leaving all of our equipment and bases there whole for anyone to pick up. And (b) my guess is that we will be asked to stay in Kurdistan, and we will accept with alacrity, no matter who is president. If the Sunnis of Anbar really have "flipped," as Nadine likes to say, and they now really see the US as allies (as opposed to "the enemy of my enemy," a very different kind of alliance) and if Iraq actually becomes a very loose confederation with the locals truly responsible for their own security, it is possible (emphasis that word) that the Sunnis may ask the US to stay in their part of the woods as well. I doubt it will come to that, but stranger things have happened. Frankly, I would see that as a best case scenario, given the current situation.
The Shia won't ask us to stay. And Baghdad may become another version of Jerusalem or Srebrenica, with multiple factions claiming it as their "own." Perhaps it will become partitioned in the end.
And if that does transpire, I wonder if all the people who talk about repatriating Palestineans in Israel will also talk about repatriating the several million Sunnis or Shias who were displaced in this war. There are more displaced people now than there were in '48. Plausibly, there are even more displaced people in the past 5 years than there have been displaced Palestineans since '48 as well. Somehow we don't hear much about it, except occasional reports of how Jordan and Syria and straining under the burden of the Iraqis who have come there.
But none of us really have crystal balls for this fluid situation. As with Mr. Market, we'll all have to wait and see what happens. |
