by Mark Kukis
Download the Full Article: Leaving Iraq: Why total U.S. military withdrawal is best
The Obama administration's move to accelerate a U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan inadvertently highlighted an unsettled question about American forces in Iraq. Will U.S. troops leave Iraq entirely at the end of 2011, as outlined in a standing agreement between Washington and Baghdad? Or will Iraq and the United States strike a new deal that allows a significant U.S. military presence to remain?
In 2009, as the U.S. withdrawal was beginning, I interviewed roughly 100 Iraqis in Baghdad at length for a book of mine recently released, Voices from Iraq: A People's History, 2003 -- 2009. The book is an oral history of the war in Iraq as told entirely by Iraqis, who spoke with candor at length with me on a wide range of topics. The subject of whether U.S. forces should stay or go came up frequently, and Iraqis generally had one of two opinions based on their sectarian identity. Shi'ites tended to be eager to see U.S. forces go -- and the sooner the better. The newly empowered Shi'ite majority often sees the U.S. presence as an impediment to the new order in Iraq, where wealth, power and privileges have been flowing into Shi'ite circles since the downfall of Saddam Hussein at the expense of the Sunni minority. (In other opinion polling, a super-majority of Iraqis has tended to want US troops out in fairly short order, a finding that remained the same over many years, and which would be consistent with the majority Shiite population of some 60% of the country being in favor of an early departure of the Americans).
Download the Full Article: Leaving Iraq: Why total U.S. military withdrawal is best
Mark Kukis is a journalist and writer now living in Boston, Massachusetts. He has written for Time, The New Republic, and Salon, and was the White House correspondent for United Press International, 1999-2001. His most recent book is Voices from Iraq: A People's History, 2003-2009
Comments
"Stay or go" may be the wrong debate. The positions of the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populaces offered by this author all sound both reasonable and reasonably accurate to me.
But developing TRUST, not democracy, security force capacity, oil fields or electrical power, etc is the critical task for future stability. How do we best help develop trust?It must be an approach that allows powerful neighbors such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia to all have increased trust as well. It must be an approach that is clearly not controlling Iraqi government in any way at any level.
It may be that a base or two, with airfields, training areas and permanent parties on PCS orders is the answer. What did we do in Germany in the 1950s? There may be some answers there. I doubt we need or anyone wants big REFORGER type exercises, and it must be done without casting any of those big states as either our "enemy" or our "friend." I know there will be many who will want to cast Saudis as the good guys, Iranians as "the threat" and Turks as the "wildcard." I think it should be with all four as allies/wildcards and to keep our role as one of helping all to move forward together with greater trust and less worry about what the others might be plotting. This would likely help Israel to relax a bit as well.
Not "the answer" just an opinion as I think out loud a bit...
Bob