Dave Shuler asks, “Could someone please explain to me why the various insurgent groups in Iraq will suddenly stop murdering their fellow-citizens, blowing them up with bombs, and gassing them just because American troops have left Iraq?”
The flippant answer, offered by commenter M. Takhallus, is probably right, at least in the short term:
They won’t, of course, but we won’t care. The media will move on when the American forces leave. They’ll be covering Iraq from Kuwait. And we won’t be any more concerned than we are with any of the many worldwide slaughters under way. Iraq will become Darfur — we’ll make noises and do nothing and the few still paying attention will spend their time assigning blame. We will look away, just like we did when North Vietnam took the south and when Pol Pot massacred his own people.
Unfortunately, that approach is not an option in the heart of the Arab Middle East. In yesterday’s Democratic debates in Nevada, Joe Biden hit the nail on the head: “Everybody here today has said we’ve got to get out of Iraq. And we do. But then the question is, what’s next?” he said. “If that civil war metastasizes into a regional war, we’re going to be sending your grandchildren back.”
T.X. Hammes predicted as much in his 2004 book The Sling and the Stone.
Because the nature of the various elements of the ACF [anti-Coalition forces] mens tey can have no unified goal other than the negative one of driving the uNited States out, the ACF cannot have a choerent plan for the political future of Iraq. All elements know that if the United States withdraws before establishing a stable government, they will still have to settle among themselves who will be in power. That struggle will escalate into a civil wr, the consequences of which will have implications far beyond Iraq or even the region’s border. (179)
It may simply be that there are no good options at this point. But simply declaring victory and going home may be the least sustainable among them.
