Withdrawal Rewind

One way of thinking about today's withdrawal debate is to think about yesterday's withdrawal debate. My first draft theory about an exit strategy from Iraq was back in 2004 when it seemed to me that we ought to take advantage of the election scheduled in Iraq for late January 2005. Troops should stay in the country through that date, the election should be organized, and then shortly thereafter we could declare victory and announce our schedule for leaving. People said that if we did that, Iraq could fall into chaos and increasing violence. And those people won the day. So we stayed. Then in 2005, Iraq became more violent and chaotic anyway. Then in 2006, Iraq became even more violent and chaotic. Then in 2007, it became even more violent and chaotic. Then momentum changed, the level of violence fell sharply, and then it plateaued at a level of violence and chaos still well-above where it was in 2004.

In other words, the bad things people worried might happen if we left still happened anyway.

In my view, today is no different. But the defense and foreign policy establishment is programmed, deep in its DNA, to have a kind of morbid fascination with the risks of not being involved. So when we talk about Iraq, the debate is dominated by the fear that if we leave some bad things will happen. And that's not an irrational fear -- it's a bad situation, pregnant with bad possibilities -- but precisely because it's a situation so pregnant with bad possibilities those risks exist either way. We chose not to declare victory in January 2005 and all the bad things that were predicted as a consequence of leaving Iraq happened anyway. There's a lesson to be learned in that.

Comments

BUT THE SURGE IS WORKING!!!?!?!

Posted by Monster | March 21, 2008 4:39 PM

I'm not much for defending administration policy on Iraq, but counterfactuals like these don't really tell us anything. Maybe if your advice had been heeded in 2005, we'd be looking at a region-wide conflagration whereas right now we just have a nasty little civil war.

Again, I largely would've agreed with you in 2005 and I don't think the conflagration scenario is necessarily plausible, but your argument as you've laid it out above is unconvincing.

Posted by Damir | March 21, 2008 4:56 PM

Matt is right. I would go further and suggest that America being in Iraq is itself a cause of most of the bad stuff happening. I'm almost certain things will be better if the Americans leave.

You can learn the lesson from Lebanon: Civil wars can not be sustained without outside actors fighting each other. As soon as the outside actors settle their differences, the war ends. Sunnis and Shias will run out of bullets if there isn't some outside actors willing to give them bullets and money to settle their scores with some other outside actors. As it stands, the outside actors willing to fight each other in a proxy war in Iraq are the Iranians and Saudis, and the main reason for their fighting is American presence in the region--mainly Iraq!

So if America were to withdraw and stop threatening to nuke Iran, we would very very quickly see the Saudis and Iranians stop fighting each other in Iraq. There really aren't many fundamental differences between these two, and in fact their relationship today is probably the best it's ever been in history.

Posted by saifedean | March 21, 2008 5:18 PM

and the lesson is: pro-war voices are the only voices that matter. anti-war voices are mere noise.

Posted by cleek | March 21, 2008 5:21 PM

Matt is right. I would go further and suggest that America being in Iraq is itself a cause of most of the bad stuff happening. I'm almost certain things will be better if the Americans leave.

You can learn the lesson from Lebanon: Civil wars can not be sustained without outside actors fighting each other. As soon as the outside actors settle their differences, the war ends. Sunnis and Shias will run out of bullets if there isn't some outside actors willing to give them bullets and money to settle their scores with some other outside actors. As it stands, the outside actors willing to fight each other in a proxy war in Iraq are the Iranians and Saudis, and the main reason for their fighting is American presence in the region--mainly Iraq!

So if America were to withdraw and stop threatening to nuke Iran, we would very very quickly see the Saudis and Iranians stop fighting each other in Iraq. There really aren't many fundamental differences between these two, and in fact their relationship today is probably the best it's ever been in history.

Posted by saifedean | March 21, 2008 5:22 PM

The goal of the "surge" was to change the situation in Iraq so that our troops could come home. If the troops are not coming home, the "surge" is not working. Keep repeating.

Posted by Th | March 21, 2008 5:34 PM

Keep plugging Matt--you are of course making complete sense.

Posted by Chris Dornan | March 21, 2008 5:42 PM

Damn, I thought from the first sentence that Matt was going to be drawing a parallel between US withdrawal from Iraq and Clinton's withdrawal from the nomination contest.

Posted by KCinDC | March 21, 2008 6:45 PM

Jim Henley mad a similar observation back in December of '06.

Posted by Jim N | March 21, 2008 7:48 PM

In other words, the bad things people worried might happen if we left still happened anyway.

I'm reminded of a story that my mother told me - that during the Goldwater/Johnson presidential race, she heard a pundit or somebody on LBJ's side say:

"If you vote for Barry Goldwater, there will be a war in Viet Nam"

and, she went on to relate, "he was right, because I voted for Barry Goldwater, and sure enough there was a war in Viet Nam"

Posted by Variaga | March 21, 2008 8:22 PM

We won, now time to leave Iraq. Bush could have been a hero if he included that in his "Mission Accomplished" speech. But the truth is, this was never planned to be a war but only an unpopular occupation - much like the Philippines occupation a century ago.

Posted by Gary Denton | March 21, 2008 9:58 PM

Scott Ritter put it very simply: Leave Iraq today. Because today is the best day you're going to see going forward.

That was true in May, 2003.

It was true in May, 2004.

It was true in May, 2005.

It was true in May, 2006.

It was true in May, 2007.

It will be true in May, 2008.

It may be true in May, 2009.

I suspect it won't be true in May, 2010, as the US will almost certainly be driven out of Iraq by then. It is very likely that a nationalist coalition will take power in the 2009 elections, and order the US out - and when the US doesn't leave, because the US has no intentions of leaving, it will be driven out in short order by a joint Sunni/Shia insurgency. The only reason the US is still in Iraq now is because the Shia - except for the Mehdi Army of al-Sadr - did not join the Sunni insurgency, mostly at the order of Ayatollah Sistani who wanted to insure Shia domination of the government first.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 21, 2008 10:00 PM

The goal of the "surge" was to change the situation in Iraq so that our troops could come home.

The goal of the 'surge' was to remove, or blunt, the usefulness of the war in Iraq as a campaign issue against the GOP in the 2008 elections. The troops come home -- good for GOP. The troops stay, but the news is better -- good for GOP. The troops stay, the news doesn't change -- America goes back to sleep -- good for GOP.

Nothing -- nothing --- the present regime does is not done for domestic political advantage.

The welfare of the troops doesn't enter into it.
They're just The Help.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | March 21, 2008 11:50 PM

Counter-counter-factual:

Suppose we left, and the same sort of violence erupted between Sunni and Shia as we've seen since the election. Suppose the American military wasn't there to keep a lid on things. Why wouldn't the violence have simply kept increasing, as it was doing in '06 and '07?

After all, most of the increase in violence was Iraqi on Iraqi. It took the Surge to return even a semblance of order to the countryside. Without the Surge, and without US troops, wouldn't the various factions simply continue killing each other with ever greater fervor?

Darfur in the Middle East, with Sunnis playing the part of the black Sudanese.

You can argue that there are more productive uses for our military and diplomatic muscle, or simply that we are paying to high a price for scant progress. And I'm highly supportive of both positions. But to suggest that there would be equivalent or reduced violence in Iraq if we had pulled out 3 years ago, or that there won't be a flare up if we pull out now, is a fantasy. A delightful, something for nothing sort of fantasy, but unmoored from reality.

Now, I'm in favor of a pull out, but we should recognize that the aftermath will be very, very ugly, and that both those who foolishly got us into this war and those who are now demanding that we get out will need to accept a share of the responsibility for the mess we leave behind.

Posted by heedless | March 22, 2008 12:07 AM

This piece reminds me of an old adage for investors:

"It's better to be out of the market, wishing you were in, than in the market and wishing you were out."

This adage is not only true on its face, it's true in practice, as I can tell you from experience.

The neocons should have thought about that concept before they invaded Iraq.

Posted by LL | March 22, 2008 2:16 AM

The reason why war supporters always talk about how much worse things will be when we leave (with unwarranted confidence, considering their record for predicting what will happen if we don't leave) is that they're ducking the real question, which is "Will staying longer change that?"

(For example, Michael Ware was asked this pretty directly by Bill Maher last night, and answered by talking about terrible things that will happen and how we have to stay until we "fix it.")

If staying longer won't change the outcome when we leave, then there's no rational argument for staying. Unless war supporters can provide real evidence that our military presence there can be used to promote reconciliation, and not just prevent chaos in the short term, then they're not arguing a choice between massive civil war, possible genocide, a failed state with terrorist training camps or whatever other nightmare scenario and nothing, they're arguing a choice between having that soon, and, after losing hundreds more lives and billions of dollars per year, having it later.

Which would you choose?

Posted by Redshift | March 22, 2008 12:58 PM

Let's follow on the perfect scenario for the right wing nuts.

Let's say the Sunnis get tired of shooting the Shia and vice versa and decide to deal.

They make a coalition government, the Shia even start handing out oil money to the Sunni provinces in even more amounts than they need to by the breakdown of population and they take on the Sunnis to fill exactly half the Iraqi government positions.

Everybody's happy.

The US pulls out six months later.

Six months or two years later, somebody - maybe some Al Qaeda leftovers - blows up a mosque.

The violence starts all over again.

What do we do? Send another 160,000 troops back in? Are we responsible for the Sunni-Shia conflict for the next thousand years?

Why isn't that scenario just as likely as one in which the US pulls out NOW, the Sunnis and Shia shoot it out for a while until they're exhausted, make a deal, and the same thing as described above happens?

The reality is that the US has no effect on the situation except to delay the actual resolution of the Sunni-Shia conflict.

The US isn't solving anything, it isn't making anything better, it isn't doing ANYTHING at all except delaying the resolution - whether that resolution be by violence or by negotiation.

And the cost of that delay is $144 billion - minimum - plus another thousand US soldiers dead and another seven thousand injured and another ten thousand with PTSD and another ten or twenty thousand Iraqi civilians dead per year.

For what, the next ten years? The next twenty?

What evidence can ANYONE provide that says they can prove a stable Iraqi government without major violence will exist if the US stays another ten years?

It's simply ludicrous. It's an impossible position to defend.

And that means it's a lie. It's a fraud.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 22, 2008 7:48 PM