The Kansas City Star March 20, 2010
U.S. needs to be careful with pace of withdrawal from Iraq
By E. Thomas McClanahan
The recent Iraqi election triggered an amazing burst of optimism from the commentariat, which was remarkable after so many years of dismissive gloom.
Newsweek took the prize with a cover story headlined, “Victory at Last.”
The dramatic change in tone got me wondering, though. Is there a hidden subtext here, something along the lines of: “Iraq was yesterday’s war; forget about it; it’s time to move on”?
To be sure, the election was a milestone. The Iraqis are building a real political system based on popular sovereignty. It’s not a system as solid as our own, but something surprising for the Middle East.
The Iraqis are slowly learning the art of compromise. Those who find themselves on the losing side of arguments are by and large resisting the temptation to resort to weapons.
In the last parliamentary election in 2005, 130,000 coalition troops took the lead in providing security. In the March 7 election, the Iraqis did it all themselves.
Yet Iraq’s political development has a long way to go. John Pike of Globalsecurity.org notes that Iraqi political parties seem to have actually regressed.
“They were better off four years ago than they are now,” he said. “It’s just turned into gray goo recently.”
Iraqi parties are shifting and unstable — ephemeral coalitions of factions, rather than groups organized around long-term goals, ideas or governing philosophies.
For example, the Iraqiya bloc led by secular Shiite Ayad Allawi was “slapped together in the last few months or so,” Pike says. “A lot of these people jumped ship to go with him instead of somebody else. They don’t know what party they belong to.”
It’s far too early to conclude that things in Iraq can’t come flying apart once again.
Former ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was instrumental in implementing the troop surge with Gen. David Petraeus in 2007 and 2008, shares these worries.
In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Crocker said he was concerned about plans to draw down U.S. troop strength in August from 100,000 to 50,000.
The security agreement Crocker helped negotiate with the Iraqis requires a full withdrawal by 2011. But the August drawdown isn’t required, and it’s a move that makes Crocker uneasy.
He noted that the horse-trading needed to form a new government could take months. And during that time, major issues still pending — such as a new oil law or the status of Kirkuk — will remain unresolved.
“Things aren’t going to be much further along come August than they are right now,” Crocker said. “So I would be more comfortable, within the terms of the agreement we negotiated, with keeping a more robust force for a longer period of time.”
That’s especially important given what Crocker describes as Iraq’s “tendency toward authoritarianism.” Iron-fisted rule didn’t start with Saddam Hussein, he said, although Hussein was an extreme example.
During most of the post-World War II period, the country was run by a succession of authoritarian leaders.
Given that, and the still-evolving state of Iraqi democracy, the Obama administration should be prepared to negotiate changes in the security agreement allowing a residual force to remain well past 2011. We’ve done much the same in other places of conflict, including Germany and Korea.
Those troops wouldn’t have to do much. They wouldn’t conduct operations “outside the wire,” except in some sort of emergency. But their mere presence would deter any potential coup-plotter and keep Iraqi democracy on track. They would ensure that the heavy price paid by both Iraqis and Americans still pays strategic dividends, in the form of a thriving Arab democracy and a free people.
To reach E. Thomas McClanahan, call 816-234-4480 or send e-mail to mcclanahan@kcstar.com.
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