The Washington Post has a lengthy article today, written by policy wonks from Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution, that urges the United States to lift the veil from its eyes and see the Iraq problem for what it really is: a civil war. Gone are the days for the flowery rhetoric about spreading democracy and defeating terrorists. The risks are urgent and imminent, our troops are in harm’s way, and we need immediate realistic leadership.
“Much as Americans may want to believe that the United States can just walk away from Iraq should it slide into all-out civil war, the threat of spillover from such a conflict throughout the Middle East means it can’t. Instead, Washington will have to devise strategies to deal with refugees, minimize terrorist attacks emanating from Iraq, dampen the anger in neighboring populations caused by the conflict, prevent secession fever and keep Iraq’s neighbors from intervening. The odds of success are poor, but, nonetheless, we have to try.”
The article proposes the following policy solutions for the US and the rest of the world, all of which has major stakes in what’s happening in Iraq:
- Secure the non-intervention of neighbors either through economic aid or through the threatened use of punitive military strikes in response to intervention.
- Do not pick winners; the civil war must determine that for itself and will do so whether we like it or not.
- Manage the Kurds. Civil war will drive them to seek full independence, which will inflame secessionist passions of other sorts. We should provide incentives for them to at least postpone the issue of independence until civil order returns in Iraq.
- Buffer the borders by setting up refugee collection points and by preventing the movement of terrorists and weapons. Massive refugee movements to other countries can destabilize their fragile governments and increase disorder there; we should therefore strive to keep as many of them safe in Iraq as possible until violence dies down. Unfortunately this will require continued expense and some kind of troop deployment for the US.
What a depressing yet realistic formulation of the immense challenges facing the US and the rest of the world in the wake of our disastrous invasion. This will no doubt go down in history as the worst foreign policy mistake ever in the history of the United States. In the face of that disaster we have to get real, get our troops out of harm’s way as much as possible, and minimize the damage the best we can.
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This is a matter of framing at this point. People are ok with “sectarian violence” and the way Bush frames it, but civil war doesn’t sit quite as well. “Civil war” needs to be beat to death.
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