Time to Cut and Run in Iraq?

Congressman John Murtha, a senior Democrat well-respected on defense matters and himself a decorated Marine Vietnam veteran, touched of a renewed debate about the war in Iraq this week by calling for an immediate withdrawal of US forces.

Leaving aside the politics (were such a thing possible) and leaving aside whether or not we made a mistake by invading Iraq, let's consider our current options.

• We can withdraw immediately (as the Moore/Murtha faction advocates). (Presumably this is what Murtha intended when he spoke of a six month withdrawal process. It took six months or so to get the troops into the theater with no armed opposition, it will take at least that long to pull them and their equipment out in an orderly fashion in the face of potential guerrilla attacks.)
  
  
• We can establish a timetable for withdrawal, with clearly defined dates (the mainstream Democratic party position).
  
  
• We can continue the Administration's current policy committing US troops to stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces are able to take over responsibility for maintaining (or establishing) civil order.

There are many critics on the right who view the Murtha/Moore position as irresponsible. While I think adopting this policy would be a mistake, I don't agree that there is any impropriety in advancing this view. As Tigerhawk wrote in his essay on "dissent and limited war," the right to dissent is one of the things we are fighting to defend in Iraq, even if there is a price to be paid in providing aid and comfort to the enemy by encouraging them to believe that a US withdrawal is imminent. But make no mistake, there is a price to be paid -- in American lives and treasure, not to mention Iraqi lives -- for giving the Iraqi insurgents hope that their jihad against occupation is making progress towards precipitating a unilateral US withdrawal.

Nearly a year and half ago, critics of the Iraq war on what might be called the "isolationist right" called for a prompt withdrawal of US troops in Iraq, arguing that there were no vital US security interests at stake in Iraq after the fall of the Baathist regime. The Cato Institute's Special Task Force on Iraq published a short monograph (click here to buy a copy at Amazon) advancing this view in June of last year. I wrote a brief summary of their argument last July. Essentially, they argued that long term US self-interests would be best served by a prompt troop withdrawal, even if this resulted in a civil war or a less then democratic government in Iraq.

I disagreed with this view then and continue to believe it would be a mistake for the US to commit to a troop withdrawal on any fixed timetable.

1. A premature US withdrawal might well result in a bloody civil war between Shia and Sunni in Iraq. There is also the risk that this civil war would expand to become a regional conflict if Syria or Iran were to enter the conflict to prevent the defeat of the Sunnis or Shiites, respectively. The most likely outcome, however, is that Iraq's Shia majority would crush the Sunni insurgents. While this may not be a bad thing in itself, my fear is that radical militias affiliated with Iraq's Shia parties would assume control of the Iraqi government. Since many of these militias are believed to be supported and influenced by the Iranian government, this would result in Iran becoming the dominant military and economic power in the region. (The combined oil reserves of Iran and Iraq would be nearly equal to those of Saudi Arabia.)
   
   
2. A nuclear armed Iran in tacit control of Iraq would be a strategic nightmare for the US and the west in general. Iran has been the preeminent state supporter of global terrorism since Libya decided to get out of that business. With nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of reaching most of continental Europe and all of the Mideast, the religious fanatics controlling Iran's government could try to make good on their recently renewed pledge to "wipe Israel off the map." Since Israel is widely believed to be a nuclear power, there would be the very real possibility of a war using nuclear weapons being fought in this economically vital region. Were this to occur, the potential loss of human life and economic damage to the global economy might well rival that of WWII.
   
   
3. More worryingly for the US, religious fanatics in Iran might supply Al Queda, Hamas, or Hezbollah with nuclear weapons for use in terrorist attacks.

If we can prevent any of these outcomes by continuing our efforts to support the Iraqi government, we would fools not to do so. While we all love peace and want to see our troops return home safely to their families, closing our eyes to the possibility of Islamist radicals armed with nuclear weapons is not an alternative. If we learned anything from 9/11 it is that you cannot ignore religious fanatics seeking world domination in the hope they will go away. Perhaps, as Nofit Amir wrote in yesterday's NY Sun, this may be too simple a concept for us to understand:

It might be the sheer simplicity of Islamic fundamentalism that confounds journalists. To the refined Western intellect it seems unbelievably crude to think that anyone would truly seek to dominate the world. . .

Unfortunately, the price of our lack of imagination and understanding may prove to be truly staggering.