Departure's Difficulties
It's not hard to see how we got into the mess that is the Iraq War. What's hard is figuring out a way to get out of it with the lowest number of American and Iraqi casualties. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times carried an op-ed piece by Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, which details the problems and which suggests some possible solutions. She also points out why moving the administration towards some of those solutions is going to be difficult.
THOSE WHO SUPPORT remaining in Iraq increasingly can be heard invoking the specter of genocide as grounds for staying. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned that, if U.S. troops leave, "You'll see a bloodletting in Baghdad that makes Srebrenica look like a Sunday school picnic."
Some defenders of President Bush's approach, having backed the Iraq war from the start, have now settled on genocide warnings after each of their original justifications for being in Iraq — weapons of mass destruction, terrorism prevention, energy diversification, regional stabilization and democracy promotion — has crumbled one by one.
...Although critics of withdrawal do a masterful job of painting a grim picture of the apocalypse that awaits, they offer no account of how U.S. forces in Iraq will do more than preserve a status quo that is already deteriorating into wholesale ethnic cleansing. Although more than 115,000 U.S. troops have been in Iraq for the last four years, about 3.8 million Iraqis have fled their homes and at least 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing each month. It would be nice to think the surge of troops to Baghdad would help to staunch the flow. But with only one-third of the new troops on duty at any given time in a city of 6 million people, they will have no more success deterring the militias intent on carving out homogeneous Shiite or Sunni neighborhoods than U.S. forces have had to date. About 74% of Shiites polled and 91% of Sunnis — the people who have the most to fear from genocide — would like to see U.S. forces gone by the end of the year.
Unfortunately, many of those who favor a U.S. exit have recklessly waved off atrocity warnings or taken to blaming Iraqis for their plight. What is needed to stave off even greater carnage than we see today is neither assuming massacres won't happen nor suspending thought until the surge has demonstrably failed in six months —at which point other options may no longer be viable. Rather, we must announce our intention to depart and use the intervening months to prioritize civilian protection by pursuing a bold set of measures combining political pressure, humanitarian relocation and judicial deterrence. [Emphasis added]
Prof. Power sketches out a few proposals which, if actively implemented, might in fact ratchet down the violence enough for a new Iraqi government to actually govern in a meaningful way. Although her comments on 'voluntary relocation' made me queasy (as does partitioning Iraq into three parts, one for each broad ethnic group), most of her suggestions make sense, but only if the US actually committed to it. It's hard to see this administration making that kind of commitment, even with the promised congressional pressure.
Many of those who say U.S. troops should stay in Iraq to prevent genocide are the same people who for political reasons refuse to acknowledge the gravity of the calamity unfolding on our watch. The same people who modeled a war on best-case scenarios are now resisting ending a war by invoking worst-case scenarios. But after years of using the alleged needs of the Iraqi people to justify U.S. political postures, it is long past time to use the leverage we still have to actually advance Iraqi welfare. [Emphasis added]
Opponents of the administration's current "surge" policy would do well to consider Prof. Power's suggestions and incorporate them into some meaningful alternative to the current "take and hold" fiasco.
THOSE WHO SUPPORT remaining in Iraq increasingly can be heard invoking the specter of genocide as grounds for staying. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned that, if U.S. troops leave, "You'll see a bloodletting in Baghdad that makes Srebrenica look like a Sunday school picnic."
Some defenders of President Bush's approach, having backed the Iraq war from the start, have now settled on genocide warnings after each of their original justifications for being in Iraq — weapons of mass destruction, terrorism prevention, energy diversification, regional stabilization and democracy promotion — has crumbled one by one.
...Although critics of withdrawal do a masterful job of painting a grim picture of the apocalypse that awaits, they offer no account of how U.S. forces in Iraq will do more than preserve a status quo that is already deteriorating into wholesale ethnic cleansing. Although more than 115,000 U.S. troops have been in Iraq for the last four years, about 3.8 million Iraqis have fled their homes and at least 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing each month. It would be nice to think the surge of troops to Baghdad would help to staunch the flow. But with only one-third of the new troops on duty at any given time in a city of 6 million people, they will have no more success deterring the militias intent on carving out homogeneous Shiite or Sunni neighborhoods than U.S. forces have had to date. About 74% of Shiites polled and 91% of Sunnis — the people who have the most to fear from genocide — would like to see U.S. forces gone by the end of the year.
Unfortunately, many of those who favor a U.S. exit have recklessly waved off atrocity warnings or taken to blaming Iraqis for their plight. What is needed to stave off even greater carnage than we see today is neither assuming massacres won't happen nor suspending thought until the surge has demonstrably failed in six months —at which point other options may no longer be viable. Rather, we must announce our intention to depart and use the intervening months to prioritize civilian protection by pursuing a bold set of measures combining political pressure, humanitarian relocation and judicial deterrence. [Emphasis added]
Prof. Power sketches out a few proposals which, if actively implemented, might in fact ratchet down the violence enough for a new Iraqi government to actually govern in a meaningful way. Although her comments on 'voluntary relocation' made me queasy (as does partitioning Iraq into three parts, one for each broad ethnic group), most of her suggestions make sense, but only if the US actually committed to it. It's hard to see this administration making that kind of commitment, even with the promised congressional pressure.
Many of those who say U.S. troops should stay in Iraq to prevent genocide are the same people who for political reasons refuse to acknowledge the gravity of the calamity unfolding on our watch. The same people who modeled a war on best-case scenarios are now resisting ending a war by invoking worst-case scenarios. But after years of using the alleged needs of the Iraqi people to justify U.S. political postures, it is long past time to use the leverage we still have to actually advance Iraqi welfare. [Emphasis added]
Opponents of the administration's current "surge" policy would do well to consider Prof. Power's suggestions and incorporate them into some meaningful alternative to the current "take and hold" fiasco.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Diane at 3:39 AM
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