We Won! So Let’s Go Home
The WaPo is reporting that the U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating blows to Al Qaeda in Iraq, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group.
The Bush administration, of course, began describing AQI as the chief bogeyman after other stay-the-course rationales sunk under their own weight, including the bald-faced lie that it was these insurgents who launched the 9/11 terror attacks.
But while AQI has indeed been dealt a number of crippling blows since the Surge began, it represents but a small fraction of the insurgency and WaPo writers Thomas E. Ricks and Karen De Young note that there are risks in declaring victory:
* AQI has been resilient in the past and could rise again.
* It would acknowledge the obvious – that the war has become a civil war that the U.S. has no business being involved in.
And then there is my favorite:
Nature abhors a vacuum and, if AQI has indeed been dealt a fatal blow, it will only be a matter of time before others step in to fill the void.
5 Responses to “We Won! So Let’s Go Home”
Time to roll out the “Mission Accomplished” banner and bring in the aircraft carrier in for the photo-op.
The deeper problem is that it means the day of alliances between anti-AQI Sunnis and US military forces in Anbar and elsewhere may soon be coming to an end. The only way the US will be able to maintain the allegiance of Sunnis will be with money – but even that won’t be enough as the Sunnis’ goals are primarily political and not economic. The Sunnis vigorously oppose federalism in Iraq, which the SIIC (Hakim’s Shi’ites) support, because it would prevent oil expenditures from reaching the Sunni West and it would grant Iran more power in Iraqi affairs. So instead the Sunnis will keep focusing on taking over the central government again – as in the days of Saddam – and will use the US and its anti-Iranian rhetoric as a means to secure control over Baghdad. Of course, the Sunnis will first have to reclaim the neighborhoods they lost at the hands of the Sadrists.
AQI was largely a deadly distraction to the deeper conflicts within Iraq. Managing to piss EVERYBODY off, AQI overreached and convinced the entire population to rise up against it. But what happens now is the real issue.
elrod:
Extremely well said.
Elrod is so right.
I don’t see what the clear and obvious conclusion is, though. As you say, what happens now is the real issue.
Having invaded, the future of Iraq will hang around our necks forever, and the blaming will have some real justification.
Every argument for doing anything is based on predictions about a very uncertain future, where any number of drastic consequences seem equally possible.
Just coming home and letting the Iraqis have their civil war is not really politically (on a national or international stage) posstble, either, in the sense that every single event in Iraq will have a string to it leading to the US. We can physically leave Iraq, but we can’t leave our involvement in Iraq behind.
At the same time, the ‘political solution; as the signal for diesengagement is receding so far into the ruture, that it’s becoming more like a mirage.
Color me horrified and at a loss.
It seems like a great moment to declare victory and let them fight it out among themselves. The Bush legacy will be saved, Petraeus success will give a boost to Republican fortunes and we can finally focus on the real al queda.