It has become an article of faith for the Bush administration and for the few remaining supporters of continued U.S. deployment in Iraq that the withdrawal of U.S. forces would be an unmitigated catastrophe. This is perhaps the last desperate line of defense when all other rationales for war have evaporated, a kind of rhetorical Hail Mary of apocalyptic proportions. "The consequences [of withdrawal] for America and the Middle East would be disastrous," says President Bush. "In Iraq, sectarian violence would multiply on a horrific scale. Fighting could engulf the entire region in chaos. We would soon face a Middle East dominated by Islamic extremists who would pursue nuclear weapons, who would use their control of oil for economic blackmail, and who would be in a position to launch new attacks on the United States of America."
And this from U.S. News and World Report Publisher Mort Zuckerman: "Advocates of a 'phased' withdrawal of our troops must reckon with the certainty of a serial disaster: a full-blown civil war spreading a contagion of violence across the region, with Iran virtually uncontainable. Our enemies, as the president said, would emerge with new safe havens, new recruits, and new resources." The catechism, then, is as follows: withdrawal will engulf Iraq in bloody civil war; Al Qaeda will score a massive propaganda victory and be able to create a safe haven there from which to direct attacks at America ("if we leave, they will follow us home."); Iran and the Sunni Arab states will be drawn into the conflict, sparking a regional war across the entire Middle East that will cut off its oil supply to the world; Iran's hostile Islamic regime will come to dominate the region and either Al Qaeda or Iran will come to dominate the oil supply, allowing it to blackmail America.
I was a reluctant supporter of military action against Saddam Hussein, of efforts to provide security for Iraqi civilians, and of military support for the government elected by the people of Iraq in its struggle against a vicious, terrorist insurgency. But like anyone else with at least a modest tolerance for reality, I now believe that America cannot "win" in Iraq, that what was once a question of insurgency has become an intractable civil war and that any American strategy premised on creating a unified, stable and democratic Iraq is doomed to failure. If coalition forces cannot provide a meaningful improvement in security for the majority of Iraqis then the fight is not worth the death of one more brave American soldier. The Bush administration, however, does not frame the question in these terms. Withdrawal from Iraq would be a strategic disaster, it says, a fundamental blow to American interests. So far, it doesn't seem like the Democrats or other advocates for withdrawal have seriously addressed that argument (focusing instead, understandably, on the disaster of the present and the blunders of the past). But it's worth doing so. Not only because what is being proposed is a never-ending holding action against a posited apocalypse but because withdrawal will indeed have serious consequences. Trying to predict the future is a mug's game of course, but the weighing of risks, costs and benefits is the essence of responsible policy-making. That may seem like stating the obvious and yet the behavior of the current administration suggests it's not quite as crystal to all.
So, from the top. Or, more to the point, from the Takfiris. While the withdrawal of American troops will most likely lead to an escalation of Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq, at least in the short term, it's not clear that this will favor Al-Qaeda in Iraq overall. True, American withdrawal will give Al-Qaeda a great propaganda victory, raising its prestige among Sunni Arabs across the Middle East, but that increased prestige doesn't necessarily mean an increased capacity to attack America. For one thing, the Iraqi Shiites, along with the Kurds and Iran, will move to try and crush the Sunni militias and Al-Qaeda. The Sunni region of Iraq is geographically isolated and the country's oil reserves are all in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. Al-Qaeda in Iraq will likely be too busy fighting for its life to shift its attentions to training jihadis bound for America.
And while Al-Qaeda will take credit for expelling the Americans it will then be denied the almost daily propaganda boost of blowing up American soldiers or humiliating America by murdering its Shiite Iraqi clients. The luster of the jihadi insurgency will start to fade when it simply becomes a matter of killing fellow Muslims, a tactic that has cost Al-Qaeda a great deal of popularity in the Arab world. The police states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have been effective in dealing with Al-Qaeda networks within their borders and if those governments opt to support the Iraqi Sunni militias as a counterweight to Shiite and Iranian power, the Iraqi Sunnis may have to choose between Al-Qaeda's unpredictable help and money and guns from Al-Qaeda's enemies. More to the point perhaps, Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a franchise of Al-Qaeda central, not its main nexus. Al Qaeda's central leadership and its key training sites are still located in the wilds of Pakistan and Afghanistan. If America were to shift even a portion of its military and intelligence resources from Iraq back to the fight against Al-Qaeda central, it would improve its security tremendously.
The chances of Iraq's civil war fundamentally destabilizing the Middle East are slim. The American-aligned regimes of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have survived for decades in the face of crushing defeats by Israel, political assassinations and bloody war between Iraq and Iran. They're unlikely to collapse onto the slag heap of history anytime soon. If massive flows of refugees from Iraq threaten their position, they will turn them back. If their Shiite minorities become restless, they will suppress them. Without a large deployment of American troops in Iraq, the democratic government of Lebanon may fall and the country once again come under Syrian domination - another tragedy, but not a threat to the oil supply.
That leaves Iran as the only horse left in the apocalyptic stable. An American withdrawal from Iraq will be a victory for the mullahs, or so it is claimed. Iran will dominate the Shiite-led government of Iraq and move on to dominate the entire region. But if the result of withdrawal is chaos, Iran will be sucked into that chaos and find itself just as bogged down. With the American-aligned Sunni powers backing Iraq's Sunnis, the most likely result will be a costly stalemate. Iran does not have the conventional capacity to deal a serious blow to Saudi Arabia or Egypt and the efforts of a Shiite Persian Iran to dominate a Sunni Arab region will hardly be welcomed by the people. And while Iran backs Hizbollah and might be willing to sponsor terrorist strikes against America in retaliation for American actions and for tactical gain, it has no interest in and no capacity to declare total war on America or commit an unprovoked act of spectacular terrorism like the undeterrable psychopaths of Al-Qaeda. All involved in a regional conflict will still need to sell their oil to the world market, making a serious disruption in the oil supply far less likely. Moreover, if the prospect of such a disruption is keeping us in an interminable and bloody war that devastates American prestige, shouldn't we seriously reconsider our reliance on Middle Eastern oil to keep gas prices low?
There's no doubt that all of this is an intensely callous calculus. American withdrawal from Iraq will mean even more terrible bloodshed in Iraq and perhaps in other Arab countries too. What meager prospects for democracy and greater respect for human rights that might now exist in the region will be extinguished and the Middle East will further regress into sectarian strife and cruel tyranny. But we cannot ask American soldiers to continue their sacrifice on the basis of a prayer that things might improve, especially when America's key strategic interests are not at stake. And yet that seems to be the only scenario that President Bush does not consider a disaster.