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June 23, 2005

Should We Stay or Should We Go?

This seems to be the question on everyone's mind, as the calls for a fixed date to withdraw from Iraq appear to be gaining steam. And as the song tells us, either decision will bring its own set of problems we'll have to address. The antiwar axis is convinced leaving is the best plan, while the prowar entente is certain that setting a date for withdrawal is tantamount to surrendering the gains we've established to date (both sides arguments highly simplified, of course).

Setting a date for withdrawal might well convince many insurgents to go to ground in the hope they could wait for us to leave and then unleash their full fury against the Iraqi government. I'm not convinced of this argument. While there are some insurgents as willing to attack Iraqis as Americans, I'm not sure how large a slice of the insurgency they represent. A fair portion of the people we're fighting over there now are Iraqis who see American forces as occupiers and want us to leave. With American forces gone, many of them will no longer see a reason to take up arms against their own countrymen. Add to this the already mounting frustration many Iraqis feel regarding the constant barrage of carbombing and assassinations and it's likely a purely-Iraqi force would have great cooperation from the citizenry in rooting out insurgents who choose to keep up the fight after Iraq once again belongs solely to Iraqis. This is not to suggest that things would necessarily be wonderful in Iraq if we weren't there now; the Iraqi security forces are not yet up to the task of taking on the insurgency unaided. But insurgency isn't electricity; you can't simply turn it on and off again with a switch. If the U.S. declared that it would leave in twelve months and the insurgency went dormant for that period to wait us out, a year's peace would provide a pretty strong incentive for the people to decide that there was no point to bringing back the insurgency at all.

Nor, for that matter, is it likely the declaration would be sufficient to convince all (if any) of the insurgents to lay down their arms. Some insurgents will look to accelerate the withdrawal through still more attacks on American forces, to create the impression we're leaving with our tail between our legs. Others will turn their attention fully on the Iraqi government, knowing that they will need to bring it down quickly once the U.S. pulls out to deny it legitimacy. An announcement of a scheduled pullout could just as easily result in a spike in violence as in a dropoff.

On the other hand, I am reminded of Samuel Johnson's aphorism regarding deadlines, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Once we have established a definite date for our troops to leave, it will serve as a reminder to the Iraqi government that they have until then to prepare themselves for the full responsibilities that come with being a sovereign nation. Such a deadline could also help to spur U.S. troops to launch such offensives as might be necessary to clean out some of the worst havens of insurgents prior to the withdrawal so as to set up the new government for success. Setting a deadline for pullout would probably be helpful to reduce the procrastination we all engage in when we know that no hard deadline exists.

No such procrastination appears to be occurring in Iraq, however. While visible progress is often hard to note as the various factions maneuver to develop a solution acceptable to all parties, writing a new constitution is not a process that can be expected to be quick in the best of circumstances. It is hardly surprising that we've heard of few great breakthroughs as yet, but there is no evidence that the parties aren't attempting to move in the right direction. Until there are indicators the scheduled vote on the new constitution may have to be postponed, there's no reason to believe that that deadline will not suffice as well as an arbitrary troop pullout date.

A declaration of a set date for withdrawal also removes our flexibility. Once we've said we're leaving on date X, any attempts to move from that date regardless of the situation on the ground will be a significant propaganda coup for our enemies. As such we will have willingly placed ourselves in a box that gives our enemies the chance to force us to either leave at a bad time or be seen going back on our word.

So having gone full circle on the issue, what's the right answer? For now, I don't see sufficient upside in declaring when we're going to leave to make it a wise strategy. We would probably do well to do a better job of emphasizing the point that we will leave once the time is right, to address the concerns of those who believe we want to maintain a permanent presence in Iraq. But setting a date to leave with so much still in the air is no better than throwing darts at a calendar. Better to focus our energies on training the Iraqi forces to the point where they can take on the burdens of defending their country without our help.