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Iraq genuinely improving
This article is surprising both in what it says and where it appears. Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, just back from Iraq, write in a New York Times op-ed that the military situation has truly been transformed, that many areas that used to be dangerous are safe, that Anbar province, once the worst part of Iraq, has become one of the best due to the Sunni population turning against al Qaeda. Ok, let’s say that this is true. Let’s say that for the first time in four years glowing reports that the Iraq situation is improving are true and not false. Great. And what happens after this improvement continues for a while, and violence seriously subsides, and we determine that Iraq has been sufficiently pacified, and that the government security forces are now functioning adequately, and that there is not a threat of “millions” of Iraqis being massacred as soon as we leave? We leave. And what happens next? The violence will return, and the “millions” will be threatened again. Nothing fundamental has changed. Nor do I see the prospect of anything fundamental changing.
However, there is another way of seeing it. If the aim of our policy is not the permanent or long term pacification and security of Iraq, but rather a temporary window of pacification and security, enabling us to withdraw our forces without the result being an immediate descent into chaos and slaughter, so that we would not be seen as responsible for the slaughter when it occurs, then maybe there is a logic to our policy after all. Email entry |