The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the
United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough
power and legitimacy to control the country will be
pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the
United States must stay the course. Why? Let’s consider his
administration’s most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.
Setting a withdrawal deadline will damage the morale
of U.S. troops. Hiding behind the argument of troop
morale shows no willingness to accept the responsibilities
of command. The truth is, most wars would stop early if
soldiers had the choice of whether or not to continue. This
is certainly true in Iraq, where a withdrawal is likely to
raise morale among U.S. forces. A recent Zogby poll suggests
that most U.S. troops would welcome an early withdrawal
deadline. But the strategic question of how to extract the
United States from the Iraq disaster is not a matter to be
decided by soldiers. Carl von Clausewitz spoke of two kinds
of courage: first, bravery in the face of mortal danger;
second, the willingness to accept personal responsibility
for command decisions. The former is expected of the troops.
The latter must be demanded of high-level commanders,
including the president.
Withdrawal would
undermine U.S. credibility in the world. Were the
United States a middling power, this case might hold some
water. But for the world’s only superpower, it’s patently
phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would
improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument
was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved
wrong then and it would be proved wrong today. Since Sept.
11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has
plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American
history. The United States now garners as much international
esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake
would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind
of corrective capacity. I served as a military attaché in
the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during Richard Nixon’s Watergate
crisis. When Nixon resigned, several Soviet officials who
had previously expressed disdain for the United States told
me they were astonished. One diplomat said, “Only your
country is powerful enough to do this. It would destroy my
country.”
Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we
will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading
Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was
in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged
a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in
1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans.
Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world
diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with
Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the
trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only
with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain
diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in
the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the
diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the
real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the
precondition for any improvement.
In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set
things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European
politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a
strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following
a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely
respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the
situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It
dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional
stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and
gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons,
we cannot stop them. But we can engage them.
None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving
deeper into the “big sandy” of Iraq. America must withdraw
now.
