What Happens When We Leave Iraq?

In a long, mostly incoherent piece in the National Review, Andy McCarthy makes the following "argument" for staying in Iraq indefinitely:

However ruefully and emptily, Democrats admit that we have to fight al Qaeda where al Qaeda is strong. It is thus the administration’s burden to demonstrate, compellingly, that al Qaeda is making a menacing stand in Iraq. Yes, what’s happening there features sectarian infighting; but it is not, as the Left contends, a civil war. It is infighting stoked by al Qaeda and the Iranian enablers with whom al Qaeda has colluded since the early 1990s. Both are making their stand, and both are intent on emerging dominant once we’re gone.

Now let's put aside for a second the fact there is no compelling evidence at all that al Qaeda and Iran are somehow working together to thwart our efforts in Iraq. In fact, let's just assume McCarthy's right. If he's right, it means that these two groups, which under normal circumstances would hate each other, are working together to cause harm to American interests. Isn't that a pretty compelling argument for leaving? I mean, generally speaking, it's not a good idea to pursue a strategy that causes would-be enemies to unify against you.

Now I personally don't believe that there's all that much, if any, Iranian/al Qaeda collusion taking place in Iraq. But this 'strange bedfellows' phenomenon is certainly happening within the Sunni population. Al Qaeda and the other factions that make up the Sunni insurgency are not natural allies. As Kevin Drum points out:

If we leave Iraq, the country is unlikely in the extreme to become an al-Qaeda haven. Partly this is because it's rage at the American presence itself that provides a big part of the fuel for AQI's growth. Our withdrawal would eliminate that source of rage and devastate AQI's ability to continue its recruiting. Partly it's because, as we're seeing in Anbar province right now, even Sunni extremists don't like AQI. Left to their own devices they'll kill off AQI jihadists in order to protect their own tribal turf. And partly it's because once we withdraw, non-Kurdish Iraq will be free to finish its inevitable transition into a Shiite theocracy — a transition that's sadly unavoidable whether we stay or not. Yes, this transition will be bloody, but in the end Iraq will almost certainly be composed of the Kurdish north, which has no use for al-Qaeda; the remaining Sunni sheikhs, who also have no use for al-Qaeda; and the victorious Shiite central government itself, which likewise has no use for murderous Sunni jihadists on its soil. Between the three of them, AQI isn't likely to last a year.

That seems right to me. The only reason al Qaeda is thriving in Iraq is because it has allied itself with other groups, mainly Sunni nationalists and baathists who have a common goal: ending the American occupation. To the extent these groups have tolerated the presence of foreign nutjob jihadists in their midst, it's because they perceive themselves to be fighting a common enemy. Take that enemy away and al Qaeda has no natural constituency in Iraq.

In other words, al Qaeda is in Iraq because we are. So it makes very little sense to argue that al Qaeda's presence in Iraq is the reason we have to stay. That's like turning on your porch light and claiming that it needs to stay on until all the moths are gone.

As far as I see it, the ONLY remotely compelling reason for staying in Iraq at this point is to prevent the violent struggle for control of the country that is likely to occur when we leave. As a friend of mine (a liberal who supported the war) wrote to me in an email the other day:

I completely don't understand how a potential, even likely genocide with "made in the USA" written all over it doesn't bother you. Is it just because its Bush's fault or it can be blamed on Bush? And where does the whole "we can't stay there forever" logic come from. If we are successful then we WILL stay there forever (see Japan, Germany, Korea). If we are unsuccessful then we will have the moral obligation to remain to prevent greater bloodshed. Why can't we stay forever?

It's a fair question and one that I think many of us on the left would prefer to gloss over. Surely it's true that Bosnian-style genocide is a possibility in Iraq. All the ingredients are there. It's not an inevitability, but it's a possibility, and our withdrawal could be the proximate cause. Though, as my friend can attest, I was against the war from the start, it's the chilling prospect of a U.S.-precipitated genocide that kept me for a long time from joining the chorus for withdrawal. But I eventually came to a realization.

Here's how I responded:

You're conflating two very different questions. The first is whether we could, in some hypothetical universe, muster up the resources to maintain a large troop presence in Iraq forever. Surely we could. But that's only possible if we do things like 1) institute a draft, 2) raise taxes significantly, and 3) despite 1 and 2 and despite all the carnage, maintain the political will to keep our forces over there. If you think that any of those things have even the slightest possibility of occurring in the real universe we actually inhabit, you're crazy.

In this universe, our current troop levels in Iraq are not realistically sustainable. So we need to start thinking about what we can do to minimize the fallout of our leaving.

Do I think that the U.S. will bear much of the moral responsibility for the violence that ensues when we leave? Absolutely. That's one of the many reasons why it was a terrible idea to invade in the first place. But, like I said, we just can't stay there forever. So we need to start thinking about what we can do. We need to start thinking about what steps we can take and what strategies we can pursue to minimize the chaos that will follow and prevent any genocide from occurring. Simply refusing to acknowledge reality, though, is not an option.

Right now, all that matters is changing the terms of the debate. We need to stop pretending that "victory"--whatever that's supposed to mean--is just around the corner and we need to start figuring out how best to extricate ourselves from this mess. There are no good options. Just a whole lot of bad ones.