Forget the national interest
Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007
The most remarkable part of the
Democratic effort to mandate
defeat in Iraq is the adamant refusal of any Democrat to discuss the possible consequences. Perhaps never before in American history has something been so fervently advocated by so many in positions of political authority without any effort to predict what will happen if that something comes to pass. The bare minimum that we should expect of our public officials—that they should weigh the impact of various policy options on the national interest—is now being indignantly rejected by the party that controls Congress. We are told that the war was a mistake and must end, but never about the things likely to happen after we choose to lose. It appears to be simply a matter of faith that things are so bad now that they can’t get any worse and that no interests are at stake that would justify further American bloodshed. But even if Democrats won’t do it, we can identify at least three possible, overlapping scenarios for Iraq after Democrats have got their way and American forces have left. Scenario No. 1 is a further slide into a civil war that would produce vastly more deaths than have occurred thus far and which also would bring in interested neighboring parties, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. What is currently low-level sectarian strife would become a region-wide conflagration between Sunnis and Shiites, with Western interests, including the flow of oil, caught squarely in the middle. Under such circumstances, the Iraq of the present would become a prelude to and microcosm of the future of the region as a whole.
Scenario No. 2 would be a civil war that somehow stays confined to Iraq and in which Iraq’s Shiites are permitted to ultimately overwhelm Iraq’s Sunnis.
In 1991, the first President George Bush refused to march on Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein because he feared a fragmentation of Iraq that would strengthen a greater threat in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A civil war in Iraq won by Shiites following an American withdrawal would produce something worse—not a rump Shiite state in eastern Iraq controlled by Tehran, but Iranian control of the entire country.
An Iran armed with nuclear weapons and controlling puppet regimes from Iraq all the way through Lebanon and Syria would become the dominant power within both the Middle East and the OPEC oil cartel. By creating a vacuum of power that only Iran could fill, we also would have immeasurably expanded the power of a revolutionary regime that has assiduously worked to destroy Western civilization from the moment of its creation and which will soon have the kind of weapons with which to realize its dreams.
And then there is scenario No. 3, in which civil war in Iraq does not necessarily ignite a region-wide conflict or lead to an extension of Iranian influence but simply turns the country into history’s most dangerous failed state. Three thousand Americans died in a matter of hours because we allowed Afghanistan to become a base for Islamic terrorists. The mind reels at how much more damage could be done by terrorists operating with impunity from a failed and more strategically significant Iraq. Which of these overlapping scenarios is most likely is less important than the fact that each would cost more in terms of both blood and treasure than would staying in Iraq for another 10, 20 or even 50 years. Each would represent the kind of long-term catastrophe for American interests that would make us nostalgic for our current Iraq troubles. One of the most important principles of prudent politics is that things can always get worse and that even a seemingly intolerable status quo is sometimes less bad than the alternatives. It is our great misfortune to have found ourselves in a situation in Iraq in which the only choices before us are bad and worse, with bad defined as having to stay for another generation or more and worse as virtually any of the things likely to happen if we don’t. Which is also why we should now demand of Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln and the rest of our representatives in Congress that they explain why none of the scenarios described above are likely to happen, or, if they do unfold, how that would be better for the country and people they represent.
—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online