Those urging President George W. Bush to set a deadline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq labor under a dangerous illusion. Today's Iraq quitters have become the mirror image of the Bosnia and Rwanda isolationists of yesteryear: deadly civil war looms, the fate of millions hangs in the balance, but America turns a blind eye as a nation plunges into civil chaos and genocide.
"Each time we are told of 'ancient tribal' or 'ethnic' hatreds; ... each time there is a demand for an 'exit strategy' rather than a 'success strategy,'" wrote Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, in 2004. "The killing really takes off only after the murderers see that the world, and especially the United States, is not going to care or react."
In the last 15 years, America's inaction has hammered nails into the coffins of some 900,000 innocents in Bosnia and Rwanda alone, and we risk making the same cataclysmic mistake in Iraq. If we abandon our efforts to construct a national unity government there, there is no doubt that Iraq, too, will face war.
This is why, even if I were a left-leaning sociopath looking to turn a wonderful gift by Michael and Ellen Doherty-Granoff '83 into an object lesson in why politicians don't listen to protesters, I would applaud, not denounce, the support of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for the war. I supported the protesters in March 2003, when Bush was poised to entangle our troops in a costly, bloodstained quagmire that I feared would wreak havoc on Iraq's population. But in April 2006, the reasons that Iraq has become such a nightmare are also reasons why we absolutely cannot give up on the Iraqis now.
Far from the source of Iraq's problems, the American occupation is the only thing standing between the current medium-intensity ethnic conflict and a full-blown civil bloodbath.
Tensions have run extremely high since late February, when Sunni terrorists killed dozens near a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra. Since that attack, American casualties have actually fallen as Iraqis have increasingly turned away from coalition forces to attack one another, leaving over 1,500 Iraqis dead in recent weeks.
Iraq's warring groups have embarked on a barbaric campaign of ethnic cleansing, an eerie reminder of the early events of Bosnia's genocide. Scores of Iraqis are kidnapped seemingly every day, many of them slaughtered and dumped into alleyways or fields. So many of these killings have been carried out by Shiite-controlled death squads operating within the security forces that Iraq's government has warned Iraqis not to trust any police units operating without American supervision.
In the last month alone, this campaign of armed intimidation has forced over 30,000 Iraqis to flee mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad to the promise of safety among their religious kin. To Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, these are omens of "a creeping polarization of Iraq," marked by a "slow, steady loss of confidence, a growing process of distrust."
Even Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who blames the Americans for the conflict, has publicly warned the United States not to pull out of the conflict. "Now? It would be a disaster ... It would become an arena for a brutal civil war and then terrorist operations would flare up not just in Iraq, but in very many places."
Despite the challenges Iraq faces, the United States has been remarkably successful in staving off civil war and bringing all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups into the political process.
A case in point is the ongoing dispute about Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's position in the next Iraqi government. Sunnis and Kurds have called for Jaafari to resign, citing his poor performance in the aftermath of February's bombing in Samarra. The resulting standoff made many observers fear that interethnic confrontation would spill out of the parliament and into the streets.
Yet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq's top Shiite bloc, has recently bowed to the Sunnis' concerns. "The prime minister," said Hakim's deputy, "should have national consensus inside the parliament, and he should have the support of the international body."
This remarkable move is a clear signal that the American presence is making a difference. Iraq's ethnic groups are slowly coming to understand that they all stand to gain if they can compromise and avoid civil war.
The logic of every-faction-for-itself has not taken hold because American and British firepower has kept Iraq's ethnic groups, particularly the dangerous Shiite militias, from taking matters into their own hands. Coalition forces have provided both protection and restraint for Iraq's sectarian groups, and while the Interior Ministry's police forces have been infiltrated by Shiite militants, the Defense Ministry has broad multiethnic representation. This has built confidence on all sides and given the parties a genuine incentive to compromise.
An immediate American withdrawal, however, would encourage the Shiite militias to fill the power vacuum and make a unilateral land grab. The Sunnis, and possibly the Kurds, would lose their stake in the political process and dig in for battle over Kirkuk. No force would prevent the Shiites, like the Serbs in Yugoslavia, from turning the security forces and other government resources to their own, violent uses.
So there is a huge danger in Iraq, but there is also a real promise that leaders will moderate their demands and achieve a modus vivendi. If we give up now, we would roll out the red carpet for an unmitigated human catastrophe - like a Bosnia, but possibly worse, both because it could suck the entire region into conflict and because the blood would be all over American hands.
Nate Goralnik '06 is asking you a question, Senator!!!
