Reagan-era hawk Edward Luttwak calls for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in today’s NYT. Sort of.
- [F]ew Americans are prepared to simply abandon Iraq. For one, they are rightly concerned that to do so would be a mortal blow to America’s global credibility and encourage violent Islamists everywhere. An outright withdrawal would leave the interim government and its feeble forces of doubtful loyalty to face the attacks of vastly emboldened Baath regime loyalists, Sunni revanchists, local and foreign Islamist extremists and the ever-more numerous Shiite militias. The likely result would be the defection of the government’s army, police and national guard members, followed by a swift collapse and then civil war. Worse might follow in the Middle East – it usually does – even to the point of invasions by Iran, Turkey and possibly others, initiating new cycles of repression and violence.
Thus the likely consequences of an American abandonment are so bleak that few Americans are even willing to contemplate it. This is a mistake: it is precisely because unpredictable mayhem is so predictable that the United States might be able to disengage from Iraq at little cost, or even perhaps advantageously.
Luttwak goes on to explain why a U.S. threat to withdraw might force all quarrelsome parties – Shi’ite, Sunni, Arab, Kurd, Iranian, Turk, etc. – to root for the USA. And if they didn’t, Luttwak says, then we would have to leave. Are any of the president’s advisers thinking along these lines?