by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Grim, one of the faintly reasonable contributors at BLACKFIVE, lays out the stakes in the Petraeus/Crocker/White House report:
We're getting closer to the Petraeus report, and therefore to the nextphase of the national debate on Iraq. Let us be clear what ouralternatives are. Commitment by America to see things through is oneoption. The other set of options pursues withdrawal on one set ofterms or another, sooner or later, according to one of several plans orsets of guidelines.
Grim then proceeds to lay out a dire scenario where Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey engage in a series of proxy wars in the land currently know as Iraq. But this scenario implies that the United States will pull its troops and private contractors out of Iraq and do nothing else, which is a total strawman. Indeed, everyone running for President on this side of the aisle recognizes the potential for dire consequences of withdrawal; they just tend to think that vigorous diplomacy has a just as much if not greater chance of offsetting the damage as an indefinite troop presence of 150,000+ that actively patrols city streets and engages in air strikes. The US has carrots and sticks to use in potential negotiations with Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran as well as some the various bad actors in Iraq that we might convince to help build up an unoccupied Iraq rather than tear it down.
Meanwhile, as I've said before, war supporters really do bear some burden in demonstrating that the Petraeus plan can lead to relative stability even after US troops leave. The Anbar stories are modest success, but Anbar doesn't have the same inter-ethnic conflict that you find in places like Baghdad or Kirkuk. How the US military is going to convince local Shia and Sunni leaders to sit at a table and hash out a deal still seems to be an unanswered question.
