Let's Get Rosy!

One thing I worry about on the Iraq issue is that the anti-war side has tended to be fighting with one hand tied behind our back. People mostly try to be relatively honest about the fact that leaving Iraq is not likely to produce a particularly happy outcome, people who nominally agree with us about the policy write columns saying we're still being too cozy, and meanwhile on the other side people just make up all kinds of crazy lies. It's a difficult way to win an argument. So I'm glad Robert Dreyfuss went and wrote up (via Kevin Drum) the optimist's guide to leaving Iraq since, as he says, "If it was foolish to accept the best-case assumptions that led us to invade Iraq, it's also foolish not to question the worst-case assumptions that undergird arguments for staying."

Fundamentally, I don't think anyone really does or can know what will happen when we leave. I personally tend to be a pessimist as a general matter and would put my bet on a fairly poor outcome if you made me. But things also could go not so bad. In particularly, the widely held view that you'd see a Saudi Arabia versus Iran proxy war inside Iraq strikes me as unsupported. Just over the past few months those two countries have been working together to try to prevent violence and disorder in Lebanon and there's no particular reason to think they couldn't do the same in Iraq.

Comments

The best argument in favor of a rosy outcome is that Bush will no longer be directly involved. Everything he touches turns to shit. The locals (Iran, Saudi Arabia) can't possibly do a worse job at handling the situation, although its not clear how much they will actually get involved.

Posted by Jim W | February 14, 2007 10:22 AM

surely the point is that accepting the best case for leaving is the equivalent of accepting the best case for going in. Ignoring the intel in advance is like ignoring the NIE now. I mean could you imagine if the NIE said that leaving would not cause catastrophe; you'd be all over it. Instead you ignore it because it doesn't fit your assumptions. Withdrawal has the potential to do for its advocates what invasion did for the neo-cons

Posted by pt | February 14, 2007 10:31 AM

Matt, maybe it's just a different way of saying what you've already said, but it strikes me that the notion that the whole place will fall apart if we leave is, in some ways, a product of the same kind of hubris that led the Bush administration and its supporter to think that the whole place would turn up roses if we went in.

Posted by Pete | February 14, 2007 10:41 AM

I have been uncomfortable with the comments of many in Congress who keep saying that Iraq had better get its act together or we are going home. Since GWB took it upon himself to invade Iraq, the U.S. does have an obligation to fix this mess as best we can before we leave; I am fearful that the point at which we could have "fixed" things has passed. I have no idea how things might turn out when we leave, but Dreyfuss is right when he says that we shouldn't accept the worst-case scenario any more than people should have accepted the best-case scenario when we invaded.

Posted by jmack | February 14, 2007 10:42 AM

Jim W wrote: "The best argument in favor of a rosy outcome is that Bush will no longer be directly involved. Everything he touches turns to shit."

This is one of the strongest points against attacking Iran, too, imo. So I generally don't just say "don't attack Iran" but strengthen the argument by saying "don't let Bush attack Iran--he'll screw it up."

The few remaining sufferers of Bush-the-warrior-hero derangement syndrome may scoff, but 75+ percent of the public will know exactly what is being said.

Posted by blatherskite | February 14, 2007 11:07 AM

You know, it's been a long time since I was a boy scout, but I still remember "be prepared". It's one of those things that's become so cliched that the truth of it is underappreciated/forgotten. That doesn't make it any less true. In something like Iran or Iraq it's incredibly important to prepare for the worst possible incidents imaginable, and then recognize that there's always going to be something that you missed that will make things just that much worse. What you DON'T do, what you absolutely, positively, naively, half-assedly DON'T do, is tell the rest of the world that it'll be a cakewalk, and that sexy young women will throw flowers across your path as you stroll into Baghdad as liberators, and you certainly don't brainlessly ignore the likelihood that there will be a certain number of people that that either A) had a good deal going under the old regime and are seriously f***ing pissed off that you ruined it for them, B) are fairly patriotic and are humiliated (and by implication seriously f***ing pissed off) that it took outside intervention by the Great Satan of the West to take down the old regime, or C) have some serious grudges against neighbors, heathen infidels who don't share their religion, slutty women who won't wear veils, and anyone else they don't like, who have been itching for enough of a societal breakdown to take action on their prejudices, and possibly D) everyone else. That's what you DON'T do. And when you fail to NOT DO THAT, you let a galactic clusterf*** happen like what we have in Iraq now.

Stupid f***ing "sensible liberals".
F*** sensible.

Posted by jonathan | February 14, 2007 11:24 AM

I think one of the reasons for general pessimism, not about Iraq itself but the region in general, is the position of Iran after any withdrawal of forces from Iraq.

One of the least discussed aspects of the GWOT is that it left the US occupying two of Iran's bigger neighbors, Afganistan to the East and Iraq to the West. However minimal the US footprint in these two theaters, this has put Iran in a bit of a Germany c.1914 scenario (sorry for the historical analogizing), pressed on two fronts and unsure on which to focus.

Take away one side of that pressure (the far larger side), and the situation is instantly destabalized. Germany goes from facing the French and British on the West to opposing only Russia on the East (ugh! damn these easily anaologized historical battle scenarios!).

There's no way to know how Iran will react to this destabilization, but there is no denying that its leaders have played the balance of power game of international affairs pretty well thus far, and they would be unconstrained to the West for the first time in decades. The change might not even come in the form of an invasion of Iraq, but whatever it is would certainly strengthen Iran to the detriment of other regional players.

Posted by Ben | February 14, 2007 12:07 PM

Saudi Arabia's position is not discussed much in the American media, perhaps because no one in the Bush Administration wants to talk about it.

Saudi Arabia, today, has some of the worst slums in the Middle East. The concentration of oil wealth in the hands of a small elite, combined with a population explosion as rapid as any the world has ever seen, has, in a short time, created one of the angriest underclasses to be found anywhere. Wars tend to destabilize aristocratic regimes, because war requires national solidarity, and national solidarity requires a sharing of sacrifice, which translates into a sharing of wealth.

The Saudi elite is well-motivated to avoid an all-out conflict with Iran, even while they are deeply fearful and angry about the prospects for Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf and Iranian leadership of the Islamic World.

The Bush-Cheney Administration has been willing to carry Saudi water, even before American water. There won't be any super-secret news conferences discussing how the Saudis are financing Sunni militia groups attacking American troops, but not because Saudi-financed Sunnis are peacefully in love with the West.

It would be a reasonable assessment to suggest that U.S. "loyalty" to the Saudi "cause" of concentrating wealth in a small elite has destabilized the situation, and absent the U.S. military intervention, Saudi Arabia would seek accomodation to Iran. It would also be reasonable to suppose that Saudi Arabia, in the long run, is inherently unstable, and prone to breakdown.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | February 14, 2007 12:13 PM

Iraq is a boiling pot and the U.S. has clamped a lid on that pot. Some think that keeping the lid on, is the way to avoid having the pot boil over. Clearly, those who think so, have little experience with boiling pots.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | February 14, 2007 12:15 PM

Dreyfuss's best case scenario is not all that rosy: he predicts basically that the civil war in Irak would grind to a stalemate, because all sides have trained militias but nobody has equipment for offensive operations. Thus no ability to shift the existing boundaries very much (this depends on neighbouring governments and the US acting self interestedly - not supplying anybody with those materials).

This sound plausible, but it does involve immense suffering.

The problem with any variation of the pottery barn argument for staying is this: the presence of the US military is the cause of the violence. It is like a splinter in your hand. Before doing anything about infection or inflammation or pain you have to get the splinter out. Even very stupid doctors (if those exist) would want to pull the splinter first.

The US military is the splinter here. Before it is out of the picture healing is impossible (it may be helpful to remember that the various groups making up the French resistance during World War II were also engaged in war with each other long before the Germans were thrown out).

Posted by albrecht | February 14, 2007 12:43 PM

Saudi Arabia has said they would fund the Sunni war effort should the civil war escalate and should the US leave. Perhaps they're lying, and perhaps that isn't quite a "proxy war," but that is something.

Posted by cg | February 14, 2007 1:25 PM

I've always worked under the assumption that, yes, in the short term, things will get worse. But the neocons are constantly asking us to think in the longest possible time frame, and I think it's important we do the same when pondering an immediate withdrawal. The fact of the matter is, sooner or later, one way or the other, Iraqis are going to have to provide for the security of Iraq. While I don't think it's as simple a matter as saying that they will stand up when they have to, I also have to think that our presence has slowed their progress in taking over security.

And I can only imagine the degree to which having a foreign army in a country--whatever its mission-- simply drives a people crazy, and creates a constant violent atmosphere. One of the things that the insurgency created for those interested in sectarian violence was the cover of violence and a loss of accountability.

The thing that bothers me the most is the assumption that the country will simply always be in chaos without a strongman, whether British, Baathist or American. I know things are terrible now, and could get worse. But in a basic way, people don't like to be in unending conflict, and with few exceptions, even the most entrenched civil wars/sectarian struggles in history have ended eventually. The genocide in Rawandan ended largely without outside influence. Of course, it happened after much too long and was a disaster in every way imaginable. But I think it does show that there is a basic civilizing effect to time and fatigue.

What's crucial--and probably unknowable-- is to what extent American troops are actually providing regular, physical protection to Iraqi infrastructure. There seems to be a lot of literature suggesting that most American troops spend most of their time protecting themselves and American facilities and ordinance. I don't say that to question the performance of our military, but its mission. Without a clear understanding of how much protecting of the Iraqi people are military is actual doing, it's impossible to say the short-term impacts of withdrawal.

Posted by Freddie | February 14, 2007 3:43 PM

The situation in Iraq can't improve as long as the American soldiers are there. Even if it will get worse before it gets better, still, the Americans must leave before anything good will happen. Anyway, I personally doubt that 150,000 soldiers are enough to prevent anything or protect anything except maybe themselves.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 14, 2007 6:22 PM

Look at it this way: things have already deteriorated rapidly in Iraq over the past three years and ten months, despite our presence. It's possible, I suppose, that things will get worse even faster after we leave. But there's no reason to believe things won't get as bad if we stay as they will if we leave right away; most likely case is that it'll take a little longer to get to a particular level of badness if we stay than if we go. But based on our track record to date, it's silly to think we'll keep things from getting to that level.

Posted by RT | February 14, 2007 8:44 PM