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In Iraq, Getting Out Doesn't Mean Bugging
Out
10.11.2006
By Yousef Ibrahim
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November 10, 2006
Rarely has a midterm election in America made so
many waves. Even interviews with the man in the
street in Baghdad suggest there is no shortage of
views on what the Democratic win in both houses of
Congress means.
Just as important is how these elections have
sharpened the focus on what America can do about
Iraq. Should America get out, stay the course, or
dig in deeper?
Far more than Vietnam, this conflict comes with a
clear definition of victory or defeat.
Victory is leaving in place a system that can
survive internecine sectarian and ethnic wars among
the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish Iraqis, as well as
stand up to interference from its neighbors,
starting with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. That
system is not in place.
To be sure, America can achieve victory by sending
in another 150,000 troops and making a commitment to
stay in Iraq for five more years and play midwife,
policeman, and protector until the Iraqis absorb
enough nation building to learn they have to live
together.
But a look at the results of those midterm
elections, which turned rather sharply on Iraq, is
enough to understand that the American public is not
willing to grant Iraqis — whose aptitude for
peaceful discourse is, to say the least, not evident
— any more American tears, dollars, or sweat.
In this time of American hegemony, America's foreign
policy and military apparatus are not trained to
mediate sectarian divides in foreign lands and
simultaneously engage in nation building.
One hopes that will change before the next, and
inevitable, regime-change war America engages in —
once our military-industrial complex has the time to
absorb and learn the lessons of Iraq.
That leaves the other solution, which is getting
out.
Defeat is leaving the place to succumb to all its
ills and descend into a cesspool of terror groups,
Al Qaeda laboratories, and guerrilla factions
committed to eternal fighting. That cannot come to
pass, but it will if America makes an unplanned
exit.
Getting out is not the same as bugging out.
An American disengagement from Iraq must be a
gradual retreat to established military bases near
the country's borders with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
Iran, and Jordan, as well as inside Kurdistan, where
we have long-standing cordial relations with the
population.
Under this plan, the new brief for American troops
will be twofold: Get off the streets of Iraqi
cities. Jump in only to rectify the balance when
outside forces flagrantly interfere to tilt it into
one camp or another.
This brief must include occasional attacks against,
but no invasions of, Syria and Iran.
One easy and seriously painful Iranian target — and
we have aimed at it before, during the 1980–88
Iraq-Iran conflict — is its offshore oil platforms.
Such a target has the advantage of being incremental
and easily accessed from the air, without the use of
ground troops. It denies the Iranians a source of
income from their oil exports but gives them time to
sober up, hit after hit. Such an approach certainly
worked back in the 1980s to bring Ayatollah Khomeini
to the negotiating table with Saddam Hussein — back
when Saddam was our ally.
With Syria, tactics must also include an air
campaign that hits not only oil fields and
refineries, but seats of power as well.
With this new configuration in Iraq, the American
military presence can easily be cut in half and the
military bases built up into impregnable fortresses
— huge green zones, if you like.
An early look at the James Baker feasibility study
for President Bush suggests that what the old fox is
going for is talks with Iran and Syria. That, too,
is fine, after they have been bombed.
America cannot be seen to be digging deeper into
what has become a war of attrition, where the enemy
decides when and where to hit and sets the agenda.
This cycle has got to be broken.
In the new configuration, Iraq can have its civil
war, as it appears that all Iraqis must wade into
yet more conflict before settling on a new balance
of power.
America's best plan now is to get out of the street
fight but make sure that no one wins until cooler
heads prevail throughout the whole neighborhood.
nysun.com
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