Did the U.S. Withdraw from Iraq Too Soon? >
Back to Kurdistan
Pulling the covers over our eyes and leaving the region is not a thought-through strategy
January 23, 2012
About Thomas Henriksen:
Thomas Henriksen is a senior fellow at both Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the U.S. Joint Special Operations University, whose book, America and the Rogue States, Palgrave Macmillan will publish this summer.
The Obama administration's precipitous departure of U.S. military forces from Iraq jeopardizes American interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our military engagement with Iraq dates not from the March 2003 incursion but from the 1991 counterattack against Saddam Hussein's conquest of Kuwait. In the Persian Gulf War's wake came U.S.-enforced no-fly zones, airstrikes, and WMD searches, plus American soldiers and CIA agents stationed in northern Iraq's Kurdistan. George H.W. Bush initiated this armed diplomacy and his successor Bill Clinton stepped it up. The U.S., British, and for a time French air power checked Hussein and midwifed a flourishing economy and democracy-in-the-making order within Kurdistan, an achievement reminiscent of postwar U.S. successes in the allied Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. In Iraq, a 20-year defensive involvement was thus snapped by the United States this past December when its last troops left without a similar consolidation of democracy or alliance.
[Why America Is More Violent Than Other Democracies.]
The power vacuum will be filled by Iran's hegemonic ambitions for the Persian Gulf and its export of Shiite revivalism abroad. Tehran is already replicating groups like Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, among militant Shiites within Iraq. Saudi Arabia and the Sunni emirates in the Gulf are countering Iranian machinations. They are arming to the teeth. Qatar is backing the Syrian opposition against the Bashar al-Assad regime, a friend of Iran. Nearby, Turkey, a U.S. ally and a NATO member, bristles at Iranian encroachments in Syria and Iraq. This cold war could give way to a hot conflict, endangering Western access to oil and perhaps opening spaces for terrorist groups to take root. Pulling the covers over our eyes and leaving the region to its fate amounts to a hope for tranquility, not a thought-through strategy.
[Mort Zuckerman: Barack Obama's Middle East Miscalculation.]
To salvage its hasty withdrawal from Iraq proper, Washington should deploy military units, including special forces, to Kurdistan, where they long enjoyed relative safety. The Kurds would happily welcome our return. A small U.S. armed presence in the semi-autonomous enclave provides several benefits. The terms for this security footprint include no Kurdish independence from Iraq's central government, which would lessen Baghdad's anxiety about the Kurds' creeping sovereignty. If Iraq fragments, then we will be ensconced inside a grateful island. Additionally, Washington should make it plain to the Kurds that they must rein in their kinsmen from waging terrorism within Turkey for separatist ends, promoting regional stability. A U.S. base would afford us operational land-based capabilities closer to the action against terrorist networks and Iranian intrigues, as Pakistan pulls away from Washington. Mostly, it would symbolize a U.S. face, not its back, to the Middle East, as it pivots toward Asia.
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- Other Arguments
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#15527
Yes — The U.S. must pressure Iraq to avoid a new sectarian civil war
ROBERT ZARATE, Policy Director of the Foreign Policy Initiative
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#29068
No — The war should never have been launched--so it can't be ended soon enough
PHYLLIS BENNIS, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies
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#33928
No — The United States should never have invaded in the first place
CHRISTOPHER PREBLE, Vice President for Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute
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#42518
No — Mission to promote "democracy" in Iraq was an unobtainable objective
DANIEL J. GALLINGTON, Senior Policy and Program Adviser at the George C. Marshall Institute
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#53934
No — The withdrawal demonstrated to the people of Iraq and their neighbors that democracy works
LAWRENCE J. KORB, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
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#63026
Yes — Iraq's fragile coalition government has begun to come apart at the ethnic and sectarian seams
ILAN BERMAN, Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council
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#73433
Yes — Iraq might take 15 or 20 years to become a functioning democracy
MICHELE DUNNE, Director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East
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#73231
Yes — The real winner in the Middle East will be Iran
HELLE DALE, Senior Fellow in Public Diplomacy Studies at the Heritage Foundation
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#103035
Yes — The president, in his own words, wanted to fulfill a campaign promise
DANIELLE PLETKA, Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
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#11819
No — Arms sales to Iraq also will provide a continuing source of connectivity
DANIEL GOURÉ, Vice President at the Lexington Institute
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#124153
No — The Iraq War cost the United States 4,421 lives and $806 billion
DENNIS KUCINICH, U.S. Representative, Ohio's 10th District
