Illogic on Iraq
By Marc Schulman | Related entries in IraqOne of the most prominent arguments of the many congressional Democrats and fewer congressional Republicans who oppose Bush’s “surge” is that the larger the number of American troops in Iraq, the smaller is the need and the incentive for the Iraqi government to make the political compromises required to tame sectarian violence. They aver that the most promising approach to reducing the violence is to threaten the Maliki government with the withdrawal of our troops.
At the same time, these representatives and senators are among those who are most adamant in believing that Maliki and his Shi’a cohorts have no intention of making concessions, as their true intent is to exact revenge on the Sunnis.
Does this make any sense?
If the paramount objective of the Iraqi government is to do unto the Sunnis what the Sunnis did unto the Shi’a, it follows that Maliki and his friends should oppose the surge and support the withdrawal of our troops, as their presence has prevented the sectarian violence from being even worse than it has been. Further, the threat that the surge’s opponents advocate would be an empty threat. Indeed, it would be worse than empty, as implementing it would help, not hinder, the fulfillment of the government’s objective.
Said in another and simpler way, the threat of withdrawal makes sense only if it’s assumed that revenge is not at the top of the Maliki government’s to-do list. And, yet, the surge’s opponents, who want to threaten withdrawal if the Iraqi government doesn’t do our bidding, are convinced that revenge is at the top of the list.
It doesn’t make any sense.
Cross-posted at American Future.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 and is filed under Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 8th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
How delightful, then, for the Iraqi government that they have an obvious path forward. The “surge” plan calls for a number of actions on their part — all they have to do is fail to deliver on those, and the Americans will get out of the way. Note that reports are that the first action (additional Iraqi troops) looks to have been furfilled in name (number of units moved) but not in reality (lots of troops not appearing with their units). One might suspect that the Iraqi’s are just being a little subtle as they go forward.