When the US Leaves Iraq

Call me a conspiracist, but I believe that US political class has already decided to leave Iraq.

I base this on the behavior of presidential candidate John Kerry during the 2004 election campaign.  Time and time again he would rail at the Bush administration for not doing something—like ramping up training of Iraqi security forces—and then it would turn out six months later that the Bush administration was doing it, but just hadn’t splashed it all over the media.

It was as though Kerry knew what the Bush administration was going to do next week, and used the knowledge to accuse the Bushies of not doing it this week.

All this year the Democrats are pushing troop withdrawal resolutions in Congress.  Why would they bother except to whip up their netroot base?  In September, after Gen. Petraeus reports, the Bush administration will either announce that the surge has been a success, in which case it will start to draw down troops, or it will admit it not quite a success—and start to draw down troops.

Democrats are doing what Kerry did in 2004, demanding that Bush do what he is going to do anyway.

But we center-right people are better than that.  We are people with serious responsibilities and a serious strategic outlook. We should start thinking about what comes next.  To help us Austin Bay has set forth the seven likely scenarios in Iraq after the US leaves.  As he points out, he’s not the only one thinking about contingencies.

Business and government make plans. Every plan anticipates a future outcome. Since the future can’t be predicted, the best plans acknowledge uncertainty. Acknowledging uncertainty means accepting risk -- the risk of being wrong.

So here are the seven scenarios for Iraq post withdrawal.  Go read the whole thing if you want the details.

1. Three new countries
2. Regional Shia-Sunni war
3. Turkey expands
4. Shia dictatorship
5. “Gang-up” of Shia and Kurds against the Sunni Arabs
6. Chaos
7. The Iraqi center holds

Doesn’t look too promising, does it?

My own feeling echoes that of the Asia TImes’ Spengler.  He points out that  proper nations “have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists.”  They need people who show up on time and get along with the neighbors.

Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to sort out its own problems.

Sounds pretty shocking, doesn’t it?  But we had two civil wars here in the US.  And between them they pretty well took care of the rejectionists, first of all the Brit loyalists and secondly the Southern slaveholders.  Since then, we have gone without civil war, which is nice.  Everyone gets along with the neighbors except when liberals come along and heighten peoples’ group identity instead of their American identity.

But there are always some troublemakers.

In the Middle East the west has been keeping the safety valve screwed down for decades because we want access to the oil with no interruptions and no shenanigans while the natives fight it out to decide who gets the revenue from the oil.

But what about the people of the Middle East?  What do they want?