ANSWER Coalition Statement, Iraq: Bush's Vietnam

It'll be awhile, I'm sure. But when you do, we'll debate the merits of your flip-flopper-in-chief that you blindly worship so much.

I was against the Iraq invasion also, not because I am a peacenik but because I think invading Iraq was not necessary and those troops should have been in Afghanistan & Pakistan hunting Bin Laden and Al Queda. Iraq was effectively contained and did not pose any real threat. Now that we're there though, if we just pulled out it could devolve into a civil war with Iran supporting
the Shiites, Syria supporting the Baathist Sunnis, and the US probably helping the Kurds protect themselves from the other two groups. It would not be pretty.

It was an idiotic move going in, but it may be even worse to leave.

is that Iraq will be run by Iraqis. Which Iraqis are none of our business. Americans have no more right to dictate to Iraqis who will run their country than they have to dictate who will run America. The Iraqi resistance are nothing less than patriots, defending their country from a foreign invader. If America was invaded, would you not do the same?

I don't disagree with you, that what kind of government they have is their business. However, I think the Sunni's are more interested in fighting for the right to continue oppressing and slaughtering the Kurds and Shiites as they have been for the past 30 years than for freedom for all Iraqis though. That's why the Shiites support elections and Sunni's don't, because demographics being what they are the Sunnis would lose a democratic election. There's nothing the US can do to change it though. I guess only time will tell.

The Kurds *are* Sunnis.

Actually, there are Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and even Jewish Kurds. The Arab/Baathist/Sunnis of Iraq still dropped chemical weapons on them and it doesn't change the argument. So there.

"Actually, there are Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and even Jewish Kurds."

Bingo...the Kurds have been OCCUPIED by Arabs since the end of WWI.
Where's the Kurdish Solidarity Movement? Don't kurds deserve the same respect as "palestinians"? I guess they would, if the OCCUPIERS weren't Arabs...

Here are a few things to monkey-wrench the "news's" perspective:

The Sunnis aren't monolithic. Many were killed, oppressed, and exploited by the US' ally, Saddam, even if it is true that being Sunni gave some or many relative advantages over other religious/ethnic groups.

Fallujah, which is often depicted simply as a bastion of Saddamism, was especially tenacious in its resistance to his rule.

Many Iraqis are of mixed Shi'a and Sunni "blood."

There were Shi'a Ba'athists.

Any close appraisal of the two bourgeois-nationalist Kurdish parties reveals that they were willing to cooperate with Hussein when it fit their interests, especially when weeding out radical anti-capitalist adversaries.

Sadr's Islamist movement, one of the most powerful Shi'a religious/political forces, has fought the US repeatedly, opposes the US presence, and Sadr himself pridefully attests that he didn't vote.

The US cries crocodile tears about friction and possible civil war between religious/ethnic groups while exacerbating these tensions by pitting these groups against one another in subtle- and not-so-subtle ways.

The "threat of civil war" between discrete religious/ethnic groups (to the degree that such exist) may end up paling in comparison to the "threat of civil war" between rival Shi'a factions, one that is pro-Iranian and leads the allegedly sovereign Iraqi government--with the Badr Brigades as its hammer--and one that has been periodically violentally opposed to the occupation and has shown signs of being willing to link up with Sunnis.

The US will be driven out of Iraq.

by Juan Cole Friday, Sep. 23, 2005 at 6:22 PM

Michael Schwartz argues that the US military cannot play any positive role in preventing an all-out Iraqi civil war and should therefore get out of Iraq.

I just cannot understand this sort of argument. Iraq is not now having a conventional civil war, in which you'd have militias fielding 2,000 or 3,000 men against one another and vying over territory. If such a civil war broke out, of course the US military could stop it. A few AC-130s and helicopter gunships could scatter the infantry battalions.

I lived in Lebanon in the early years of the civil war. There, the Druze, Sunnis and Palestinians were fighting the Phalangists (largely Maronite Catholics, but 10 percent of their foot soldiers were Shiite mercenaries). It looked by early 1976 as though the Phalangists were about to lose. At that point, Syria came in and stopped the big battles and saved the Maronite Christians. The Syrians were afraid that a Palestinian-dominated Lebanon would be unpredictable and would pull them into unwanted direct conflicts with Israel. The Syrians used their tanks to stop the fighting.

When civil war broke out in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it left a million dead, displaced 5 million persons from the country, and left millions more displaced internally. Iraq is similar in population size and in ethnic and ideological complexity to Afghanistan. A full scale civil war could be equally devastating to Iraq. Moreover, if an Iraqi civil war pulled in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers, it could destabilize the entire Middle East and could lead to $20 a gallon gasoline.

So I simply disagree with Schwartz's main points:



'1. The U.S. military is already killing more civilian Iraqis than would likely die in any threatened civil war;

2. The U.S. presence is actually aggravating terrorist (Iraqi-on-Iraqi) violence, not suppressing it;

3. Much of the current terrorist violence would be likely to subside if the U.S. left;

4. The longer the U.S. stays, the more likely that scenarios involving an authentic civil war will prove accurate. '


The US military is killing a lot of Iraqis, but whether it is killing more than would die in a civil war would depend on how many died in a civil war. A million or two could die in a civil war, and that's if the war stays limited to Iraq, which is unlikely. The US presence is not aggravating Iraqi on Iraqi violence in itself, rather it is the new political situation in which Sunni Arabs are the low man on the totem pole, a situation that will not change. That sort of violence would increase exponentially without a US military presence. The terrorist violence might or might not subside if the US were to leave, but the conventional violence could well escalate enormously. Again, it is not the US presence that increases the likelihood of civil war but rather the inability of Shiites and Sunnis to compromise in the new situation. A US withdrawal would not cause the Sunnis suddenly to want to give up their major demands; indeed, they might well be emboldened to hit the Shiites harder.

What could be done? I think the British may as well leave the south, because the local Shiite militias, however problematic, are preventing large-scale guerrilla violence and don't need the British. The Basra police don't even want the British there, after the British were preceived to have violated Iraqi sovereignty by freeing two captured British intelligence operatives.

If the British leave, the militias will be strengthened. But it is going to happen one day, anyway, so it might as well be now. The nine southern, largely Shiite provinces are not a likely site of a civil war, so why garrison them with foreigners? The US troops have now left Najaf, and the British should leave Basra.

But what if Ramadi and Samarra mount a large militia that marches on Baghdad? What if it hooks up with Sunni Arab fighters in West Baghdad? What if it tries to kill the leaders of the elected government or Grand Ayatollah Sistani?

Can anyone guarantee me that this scenario won't occur? Or that it won't lead to an enormous bloodbath, with a million dead, if it does? I have seen how these situations go out of control, with my own eyes.

I'd get most of the US ground troops out, and just cede Tal Afar to whoever is in Tal Afar. But I think the US [or somebody, and unfortunately that means the US] has a duty to maintain a couple of air bases in the area along with some Special Ops forces to forestall a Himalayan tragedy in the near to medium term. Over time the US will be able (and will be forced) to leave altogether.

Of course, I'd be much happier if we could get US ground troops out on a short timetable and have the peace-enforcing done by the United Nations or even NATO. But that isn't going to happen, so the use of air power to stop a full-fledged civil war falls to the US.

So I can associate myself with a call for US ground troops out now. But frankly I think it would be selfish to just bust into Iraq (which 75 percent of Americans supported), turn it upside down, set it on a course toward civil war, and then abruptly pick up our marbles and go home altogether. We did that in Afghanistan after 1989, and it did not turn out well for us.

Juan Cole "it is not the US presence that increases the likelihood of civil war but rather the inability of Shiites and Sunnis to compromise in the new situation."

Iraq is totally divided along ethnic and religious lines. The fact that they aren't grouped in homogenous political groupings doesn't negate this fact.

As I suspected he would, Cole has become an apologist for the continued US occupation of Iraq. While many leftists have cited him approvingly, his arguments have always had a "if only I could direct the US government, I would..." netherworld quality to them. In short, he's stupid fucking liberal.

The unstated premise of his attack is that the US ruling class is ultimately on the side of good and gives shit about fratricidal war in Iraq--despite the fact that the US has been directly complicit in, if not outrightedly responsible for, the deaths of millions of Iraqis in the past several decades.

Calling Cole names isn't a rebuttal to his points.

Nobody is disagreeing that the US shouldn't have been invaded. Do you think a civil war will break out if the US suddenly leaves? I do. Turkey and Iran and possibly other countries will join in.

Aaron explain in some detail what you think will happen if the US leaves immediately. Name calling is okay, if you include an argument with it.

I relunctantly support the troops out now position. But I have no illusion that it won't be a bloodbath.

those dang Sunnis and Shiites just need to compromise and adjust to the "new situation"!!!

they don't understand our system of government yet. it will take time, but as they get a hang of it the onus is on them to be civil.

yes, as a liberal i will grant that Iraq wasn't on the "verge of civil war" before the US arrived, but c'mon, if the different groups would just agree to agree with us, America will be sufficiently morally sanctified that it can go home in good conscience!!! any reasonable liberal can see *that*!!!. you really should listen to NPR more frequently. sheesh.

only someone who can't see nuance thinks the US doesn't ultimately truly care about the betterment of all Iraqis.

well again my last comment was posted before i saw your last one.

your support for the "troops out position"--however reluctant it may be--doesn't follow from your previous comments.

i'm going to bed. this debate will continue, i'm sure.

answer the question about what happens when the US leaves, thats what millions of ordinary Americans are asking themselves-- they want an answer. It really aint me that you need to convince.

I don't think the US gives a shit about Iraqi lives however that doesn't mean that every act by the US is always in the interests of the US ruling class. Sometimes they are forced to do things they don't want to.

those dang Sunnis and Shiites just need to compromise and adjust to the "new situation"!!!

they don't understand our system of government yet. it will take time, but as they get a hang of it the onus is on them to be civil.

You have a bad understanding of what Cole is saying. Sunnis had relative privlege under Saddam. Now the Shiites (or at least the upper class) have the upper hand. That is, in fact, the new situation. Almost any compromise (which means some form of democratic pluralism) is better than civil war.

Also your analysis of Sadr is way off the mark but I'll debate that later.