The War in Iraq

As the "war" in Iraq resembles the quagmire of Vietnam, we hear the call to pull out the troops of Iraq. While I will be the first to critisize Bush et al for invading Iraq and for leveraging the tragedy of 9/11 to fulfill a personal vendenta, I cannot disagree more with the calls for withdrawl.

Iraq is the result of colonial powers France and England creating a forced nation of three tribes, much like what we see in Africa and other colonial nations (interesting fact, look at the map of Africa and see how many boarders are straight lines, drawn in the European Capitals not from natural boundaries or human trial and error on the ground). A country that was held together through the hard and brutal hand of Saddam Hussein, but a nation that was strategic to the West during the cold war, counter weight to Iran, and due to its large reserves of oil. The West turned a blind eye to and even profited from relationships with Saddam. All this came crashing down once Saddam became too aggressive and decided to invade Kuwait. We (the west) argued that violation of another nation's sovereignty could not be tolerated by the international community and we needed to do something about it. So the West put together a multinational coalition, a real coalition - UK, Germany, Japan, France, USA, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc and defeated Hussein and his army in 100 hours. At the time the coalition had the opportunity to keep rolling into Iraq and overthrow this ugly dictatorship once and for all. Instead it stopped at the boarder and even allowed Hussien to put down a revolt with attack helicopters while western fighter jets flew over head. At the time, I felt that we had done the right thing, had we invaded and overthrown Hussien we would create a major power vacuum in the middle of the Middle East, a place ripe for Iran, Syria etc to fight for control and power. The First Gulf War was more about Oil than about human rights violations, this does not take away from its necessity. We needed to ensure that oil continued to flow freely into the Global Economy.

The second "gulf war," and I use that term lightly was started under the guise that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he was support Al Qaeda. We were told that American troops would be welcomed as liberators and that democracy and peace would sweep through the middle east starting with Iraq. 3 years later we are seeing none of the above....WMD - funny how this has dropped off the talking points of the administration. Al Qaeda is spoken about more because of their rushing into Iraq not having been present prior to the war.....Democracy, that has been a mild early success. The very fact that there were open elections was amazing. While the constitution remains up in the air, the fact that this is actually progressing is nothing short of a miracle. However, overall the presence in Iraq has been nothing but a slog, and a deadly one at that. The only reason why events have not become worse is the determination of the troops on the ground.

Having said all this, I think that the United States has a responsiblity to stay in Iraq. The administration should not see this as justification for invading in the first place, but now that we are in Iraq we need to stay the course. Ensure that Iraq is given every opportunity to establish itself, find its identity, and manage itself as a sovereign nation is the responsibility of the United States. This will take time, more than the 2 - 4 year election cycle politicians speak of. Rumors are abound that the Republicans will push to draw down some troops next year due to the midterm elections, this is irresponsible. Others have argued for complete pull out, this too is irresponsible, Iraq is in no position to be left on its own.

We need to be prepared for the long haul, not 2 years or 4 years, but more in terms of 10 years or more. We started this mess, we need to make sure that when we leave it is able to stand on its own two feet. This administration brought us into this mess under lies and misguided aspirations. Let us hope that they do not allow dreams of electoral wins give them reason to leverage the future of Iraq and the Middle East for political means.