I’m curious about the decision to slow down the U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. Earlier in the summer, the feeling was that Petraeus would resume the drawdown this autumn–removing one, perhaps two combat brigades before the end of the year. Now, the Bush Administration is talking about pulling out an Army combat brigade and Marine battalion in early 2009, leaving the next President to decide how and when the rest of the force is withdrawn.
Why? I suspect the newfound caution has something to do with the transfer of the Sunni Awakening militias from U.S. to Iraqi control on October 1. If Maliki’s Shi’ite government plays games with this, and refuses to pay the Sunnis their $300 per month–or slow-walks incorporation of the Sunnis into the Iraqi security structure, there may be a renewed burst of violence.
But there’s also this: It’s never easy to leave Iraq. There’s not only the differing views among Iraq’s ethnic factions–which seems to have been resolved, sort of, by Maliki’s desire to have most U.S. troops out by 2011. There’s also the U.S. side of the debate, in which those who believe those withdrawals should come later rather than sooner, have gained the upper hand. The reasoning is that we need to see their Iraqis through their regional elections, and the national elections in 2009. The fear is that Maliki, on his way to a faux-democratic dictatorship, will subvert his opponents in the elections if U.S. troops aren’t there to guarantee their fairness.
I’m not sure how I feel about this, although my strong preference is to leave sooner rather than later. I haven’t been on the ground in Iraq in more than a year–and the twists and turns of events in that benighted place should have humbled us all by now. If the bottom line is that the bulk of U.S. troops will be out by the end of 2011, I’m not sure it matters all that much if we delay the troop withdrawals to guarantee the elections’ peacefulness (I doubt that we can guarantee their fairness). But Churchill’s words should always be very present in our minds:
“It seems to me so gratuitous that after all the struggles of war, just when we want to get together our slender military resources and re-establish our finances and have a little in hand in case of danger here or there, we should be compelled to go on pouring armies and treasure into these thankless deserts.”
In the end, my guess is that our efforts to establish a thriving democracy will be fruitless. There will be a Shi’ite regime of one sort or another, with Sunnis consigned to the same powerlessness that Shi’ites experienced under the British and Saddam–and with the Kurds floating gradually off into their own undeclared (we hope) statehood. It would be nice to think we can have an impact on the relative brutality of this new regime, but we have more important things to do with our blood and treasure, especially at home.