Exiting Iraq

Sen Majority Leader Harry Reid properly frames the argument:

“But Senate Democratic Majority leader Harry Reid said it was time to end the Iraq war, which he denounced as the "worst foreign policy blunder" in US history.
"What has five years of war brought to America, the Middle East and the world?" he asked.
"Thousands of deaths, a trillion in debt, a catastrophic failure of diplomacy. My Republican colleagues: think what this war has done to our nation's fiscal soundness. It has destroyed it."
[Republicans tout 'surge' in Iraq war debate, AFP, 26 Feb 2008]

What will we hear from the obstructionist Republicans?

“Listen to the commanders on the ground.”
Response:

War, peace, foreign-policy, and national security: these are political questions.
When the decision is made to fight, then, yes, the military owns the fighting.
The military does not own the decision, “to fight or not to fight?”.

The Republicans are right to insist that the Iraq war is a national security issue.
Is our nation made safer by continuing this futile fiasco?
As Reid notes, we’ve had neglible ROI for our investment of $500Bn.
Our military has been weakened. Our national debt is soaring. Brave soldiers and Marines continue to die.

It is in the best interest of the United States to disengage from Iraq.

“We cannot surrender to al Qaeda.”
Response:

Our continuing engagement in Iraq is what al Qaeda wants.
They see that Iraq is crippling us – at very little cost to them!
Iraq distracts us from the real al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan & Pakistan.
The so-called al Qaeda in Iraq continues to target Americans, enabling the real al Qaeda to claim victory by proxy.
(The real al Qaeda is not now and has never been in Iraq.)

Six-and-a-half years after 9/11 bin Laden is still at large.

How, exactly, is our continuing engagement in Iraq helping us fight al Qaeda?

[Aside: which Presidential candidate would bin Laden like to win the election? John McCain, who promises to provide permanent U.S. targets in the Middle East.]

“Iraq will devolve into a failed state.”
Response:

Iraq is already a failed state.
No, it will not become paradise on earth when we leave – but it will no longer be OUR problem.

There is some chance that U.S. disengagement would encourage true international intervention. So long as Iraq is a U.S. operation, the international community has no vested interest in helping (and we’ve had no success securing meaningful international assistance to date – despite W’s repeated pledges).

“We cannot abandon our Iraqi friends. We owe it to them to stay.”
Response:

Why?
We have in good faith, if with massive incompetence, done everything in our power to create a viable Iraqi state. We’ve failed.
Does anyone really believe our continuing presence will result in anything different in a year? Two years? Ten years? What’s going to change? Why will next year be different than this year?

Even our Iraqi allies see continuing U.S. engagement as an obstacle to political reconciliation:

“But I understand that the political objectives of Iraq's three main communities are unrealizable within the framework of a unitary, centralized state.

It has been impossible to maintain a political consensus on many important issues. For one thing, the U.S.-dominated coalition, which has its own objectives, must be accommodated. ...”
[Federalism, Not Partition, A System Devolving Power to the Regions Is the Route to a Viable Iraq, By Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.]

Finally, every parent should understand that when a child gets into trouble it is not particularly helpful to come to the child’s aid over and over. Eventually the child needs to learn to handle problems on his own. In the extreme, this is called “tough love”:

Tough love is an expression used when someone must treat another person harshly or sternly in order to help them in the long run.

In most uses, there must be some actual love or feeling of affection behind the harsh or stern treatment to be defined as tough love. For example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their drug-addicted child financially until he or she enters drug rehabilitation would be said to be practicing tough love.
[Wikipedia entry, Tough Love]

As long as we are there as ultimate referees, the Iraqis have no reason to achieve a working state.

Perhaps our original intentions were pure, honest, and faultless. It doesn't now matter.

We've lost Iraq. Continuing to pour good money after bad is foolish, and degrades our real national security.

Stop the madness!