Did the U.S. Withdraw from Iraq Too Soon? >
Iraq Stands on the Brink of Disaster
The U.S. must pressure Iraq to avoid a new sectarian civil war
January 23, 2012
About Robert Zarate:
Robert Zarate, a former congressional staffer, is policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C.
By ending America's military presence in Iraq, President Obama has irresponsibly endangered that country's progress in internal security, sectarian reconciliation, and democratic reform—progress that U.S. troops had fought hard to facilitate.
President Bush's 2007 troop surge helped create the stable space needed for Iraq's sectarian groups to begin reconciling politically. In late 2010, political blocs forged the "Erbil Agreement," a power-sharing breakthrough that ended the long standoff following Iraq's parliamentary elections, and enabled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his pro-Shiite Dawa party to form a government.
[Why America Is More Violent Than Other Democracies.]
Under Obama's watch, however, Maliki failed to fully implement the Erbil Agreement, and concentrated his hold on power by promoting a partisan military that protects sectarian interests, and fostering an arbitrary and corrupt judiciary system. He also personally assumed key ministry positions on defense, interior security, and national security—or delegated these roles, without parliamentary consent, to diehard loyalists. More recently, he had hundreds of Sunni Iraqis arrested for allegedly being former Ba'ath Party members.
What's troubling is that, throughout all this, America's stabilizing military presence in Iraq had afforded the Obama administration no small amount of political leverage on key players in Baghdad—leverage that the President declined to use as Maliki brazenly consolidated power.
Obama's hands-off approach to Iraq became apparent as talks faltered for a so-called "security agreement" to permit a small force of U.S. troops to remain after 2011. McClatchy Newspapers reported that, according to U.S. government records, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden apparently remained disengaged from diplomatic talks for a new security agreement, and had virtually no direct contact with Maliki this year prior to the October 2011 Iraq withdrawal announcement.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the turmoil in the Middle East.]
At the end of 2011, as the last U.S. troops prepared to depart, Iraqi political leaders issued a blunt warning. "Iraq today stands on the brink of disaster," wrote Ayad Allawi, the former Shiite prime minister who now leads the opposition Iraqiya coalition, Usama al-Najaifi, the Sunni speaker of Iraq's parliament, and Rafe al-Essawi, the Sunni Iraqi finance minister, in The New York Times. They cautioned that if the Obama administration continues to unconditionally support the Maliki government, Iraq will move "toward a sectarian autocracy that carries with it the threat of devastating civil war."
Given what's at stake for America in Iraq and the wider Middle East, Washington should work with Baghdad to forge, at a minimum, new legal arrangements to cooperate on military, intelligence, counterterrorism, and other security matters. At the same time, Obama must find ways to pressure, publicly and privately, Maliki to share power with rival political blocs, and avoid a new sectarian civil war. That task is made all the harder now that U.S. troops have left Iraq.
- Join the debate on Facebook.
- Follow U.S. News Debate Club on Twitter.
- See pictures of soldiers returning home from Iraq.
- Other Arguments
-
#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
-
#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
-
#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
-
#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
-
#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
-
#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
-
#73231
Yes — The real winner in the Middle East will be Iran
HELLE DALE, Senior Fellow in Public Diplomacy Studies at the Heritage Foundation
-
#93031
Yes — Pulling the covers over our eyes and leaving the region is not a thought-through strategy
THOMAS HENRIKSEN, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University
-
#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
-
#11819
No — Arms sales to Iraq also will provide a continuing source of connectivity
DANIEL GOURÉ, Vice President at the Lexington Institute
-
#124153
No — The Iraq War cost the United States 4,421 lives and $806 billion
DENNIS KUCINICH, U.S. Representative, Ohio's 10th District
