Quitters (Part I)

We need a debate on how to win, not how to lose.

--Alexander Haig

The facts about Iraq don’t tell me why we should be quitting. On 9.11, Islamic terrorism became the big show. Very quickly, Bush told the country terrorists didn’t honor borders, and neither would we. We would hunt them down where they live, and we would knock out governments that offered them sanctuary. 27 days after 9.11, we were in Afghanistan successfully taking down the Taliban regime. Al-Qaeda, which means “the base,” would have to look elsewhere for a new base.

Bush’s conclusion, reached over the following year, was that Iraq made a logical Middle East base for al-Qaeda. Under Saddam, Iraq was an enemy of the U.S., and in open defiance of UN resolutions demanding it permit international inspection of its weapons research, manufacturing, and storage facilities. Iraq has the world's fourth largest oil reserves; wealth Saddam wanted to turn into weapons. Iraq had active programs to build weapons of mass destruction and a history of using such weapons. Iraq had thrown UN inspectors out of the country in 1998. When the UN in 2002 demanded their return, Saddam finally relented, but declared many facilities “off limits,” and demanded pre-notification of other inspections. These were the actions of a man with something to hide.

It’s “straw man” logic to say that Saddam was in on 9.11. That’s not the point. Here’s the point: Saddam was a terrorist, Saddam hated the U.S. and was at war with it, Saddam directly supported Palestinian terrorists, and it was reasonable to expect that terrorists with al-Qaeda connections, people such as Abu Musab al Zarqawi would find their way to Iraq and begin operating there, with Saddam’s blessing.

We went into Iraq in 2003, quickly overthrew Saddam, and set about establishing a democratic Iraq in its place. Our successes in the war on terror—Afghanistan, Iraq, homeland security—helped pave the way for Bush’s re-election in November 2004. Over the next year, 2005, Iraq held three separate, successful national elections that would lead to establishment of a democratic Iraqi government, and would allow for a drawdown of U.S. forces there. Anyway, that was the plan.

Al-Qaeda disrupted our planned withdrawal on February 22, 2006, when it destroyed the sacred Shiite Golden Mosque in Samara. Shiites predictably retaliated against Sunnis throughout the country, and the violence from both sides that followed tore the country apart for much of the time since. Instead of withdrawing troops, the U.S. had to bring in more troops in an effort to get Baghdad—where Sunni and Shiite living together make up a quarter of the country’s population—under some sort of control.

If we had sent in more U.S. troops earlier, Iraq’s security situation would have been better. Bush made mistakes, and is now trying to correct them. Should we quit now, before we know if the surge will work?