Commentary » Blog Archive » The View from the Continent
What they don't seem to understand is that ending U.S. involvement in the war won't end the war. In fact, if Obama or Clinton follow up on their stated commitments, it is likely to trigger mass death and possibly genocide, revitalize al Qaeda, strengthen Iran, and further destabilize the region. The irony would be that the plans laid out by Democrats, if followed, would increase, not decrease, Iraq's dominance of American foreign policy. An Iraq that is cracking up and caught in a death spiral is not something that even a President Obama or Clinton could ignore.
Actually, this analysis is incorrect. We will have a Democrat in the White House next year, and Democrats will control both houses of Congress. And there are too many markers all of the victors will owe to the anti-war left wing of their party, which will be in no mood to accept half measures. Therefore, we will immediately begin withdrawing from Iraq, and I would expect that most of our troops will be gone within a year. (Iran will put a damper on the violence long enough to let the Democrats do what the Mullahs most want, which is get the hell out).
Afterwards, Iran will simply carve up Iraq into the parts it wants, (where the oil is) and the parts it doesn’t care about (where the oil isn’t). In the process, the Sunni minority will be ethnically cleansed, and there won’t be a damned thing Saudi Arabia can do about it.
It isn’t commonly recalled this way, but when Nixon pulled us out of Vietnam, his withdrawal was much less precipitate than the new Dem president’s will be, and he left South Vietnam in better shape to resist the North. Nonetheless, that wasn’t enough for vengeful Democrats, who made sure that not only would South Vietnam get no men from us, it would get no more arms or money, either. Shortly thereafter the South collapsed, and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered, and hundreds of thousands more vanished into camps. Many never came out again.
Did America or the rest of the world care? No, not beyond braying about how the collapse demonstrated how thoroughly the commies had defeated America and its puppet military.
It will be the same in Iraq. Iraq will vanish in a quiet bloodbath, and Greater Iran will emerge. The Sunni and the Shia will then be oil equals, and free to resume their internecine war that has been on hold the past few decades while both united against a US presence. Once we are gone, they will be free to return to their millennial efforts to slit each others’ throats.
In the end, that may be the best solution after all. I don’t care if they all murder each other over there. They are only nominally civilized, and barbarian savages do tend to engage in final solutions. As long as they turn their attention to each other and leave us alone, I have no problems with it.
We will have to find some substitute for the energy they export to us, but we will. The price of oil guarantees it. (And sometimes I wonder if Bush isn’t smarter than he looks - by deliberately declining to do anything effective to manage energy policy in this country, he has effectively ceded that management to the free market. And the free market always finds a better way than statist interventions.)
The world will look very different two years from now. It’s going to be an interesting time.
Of course, you know what the Chinese say about interesting times, don’t you?
Oh, hey! The Chinese! Remember them?
