Charles Krauthammer has written an article discussing “two rationales for withdrawing from -- let's be honest: abandoning -- Iraq: (a) Iraq is not worth it, and (b) worth it or not, the cause is lost.” If we depart because Iraq’s not worth it, Krauthammer notes:
the central government in Iraq will collapse, and the beneficiaries will be Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda, the three major terror actors in the world today. It would not just be a psychological victory, but a territorial one. Al-Qaeda will gain a base in Mesopotamia; Syria and Iran will share spheres of influence in what's left of the Iraqi state. . . At this point, it is simply indisputable that the collapse of Iraq's constitutional government would represent an enormous gain for the forces of terror.
Krauthammer goes on:
The other rationale for withdrawal is that the war is lost and therefore it is unconscionable to make one more American soldier die for a cause that cannot be salvaged. . . And that depends on whether the government of Nouri al-Maliki can face up to its two potentially mortal threats: the Sunni insurgency and the challenge from Moqtada al-Sadr.
The vast majority of Sunnis are fighting not for ideology but for a share of power and (oil) money. A deal with them is eminently possible . . . Our ambassador in Baghdad has [also] been urging the Maliki government to . . . get serious about the growing internal threat of Sadr's Mahdi militia, which is responsible for much of the recent sectarian violence and threatens to either marginalize or supplant the central government.
What Krauthammer fails to note is that the al Qaeda extremists and the Mahdi milita extremists both benefit from the ongoing war between them. Each side, by going after the other, weakens the true enemy in the middle: the forces favoring democracy. Neither extreme has an incentive to settle. Both want terror.
More on the dynamic of extremism in my next post.
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