The Consequences Of Withdrawal

by tristero

I don’t think Krugman is entirely right about this:

It’s true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a “graceful exit” from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we’re gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.

But nobody – not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out – thinks we’re making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we’ll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.

If you are looking for a clearcut exposition of blatant moral imperatives, you wont’ find it in what’s to follow as I discuss what Krugman said. Nor is this a finished, coherent argument. It’s a first attempt to sort out a way to grasp the enormous problems Krugman’s column discusses. I’m posting it in the hopes that you can help clarify some of this for me.

While for the most part I think Krugman has it right, I think he errs is in one specific way. To use the dessicated language that so many pompous foreign policy types like to employ to keep themselves from contemplating the carnage behind their words, Krugman commits what I think is something close to a scaling error.

Where I part with Krugman is at the level of the individual where I think Krugman simply is wrong to claim that the results will be the same regardless of what Bush does or doesn’t do. The horrors to come – and I agree there will be a lot no matter what- will take substantially different paths on individual people and their families depending upon whether and when the US withdraws. Different brothers will die, different mothers will live lives of abject misery. And, while, yes, the same Bush-connected scumbags will reap the most profits regardless of what happens – the Bechtel and Halliburton criminals – different lower-level parasites will become fantastically rich exploiting Iraq.

Krugman doesn’t mention it, but the familes of the dead to come will blame the US – including you and me – if Bush leaves. Or the families of the dead to come will blame the US – including you and me – if Bush stays. But those families willl surely be different ones. And they will hate us more vehemently than we can possibly imagine. In that sense, the intensity of the trauma and hate will be the same. But the situation, and its consequences, will be different depending upon what Bush does. Both will be tragic, but different.

Now, if – if – the US government were run by even halfway decent women and men, the question of the extent of the inevitable tragedies to come would make it very important to argue which alternative would lead to more carnage, leaving or staying in some capacity. Even then, the only sensible alternative would become quite clear, I think, after only the briefest discussion: get out of Iraq. But given the Bush administration, its lust for war, its corruption, its dishonesty, and its sheer incompetence, there is nothing to argue about. The troops should leave. Starting today. Their presence is worse than pointless. American kids are killing and getting killed solely because the most powerful individual on the planet is too much of a coward to admit error and won’t order their withdrawal. There is no other reason they are there. They can do no genuine good – but will increasingly foment tremendous, compounding catastrophes – while they remain in Iraq, They should leave. Now.

That’s what should happen. What will happen is this. Bush will stay and things will get so chaotic and awful that Iraqis (and Americans) will remember this as a time when the decisions about what to do were both crystal clear and pretty hopeful. Or Bush will leave in such a fashion as to put the rest of the world – not to mention the Middle East – into more of a panic than it’s already in. Or Bush will try to have it both ways, combining – as he did, for instance, with stem cells – the stupidest moral reasoning with the most worthless policy.

In short, the terrible history of the rest of the first ten years of the new millenium will be terrible but, contra Krugman, it unfold very differently at the personal level, depending on what the ignorant rhinestone cowboy with his hand on the nuclear button decides to do. Facing those different realities, understanding them, planning for them, is critical.

Krugman is very right, and courageous, to make it clear that things will get much worse if the US pulls out. But that is absolutely no reason to delay withdrawal another millisecond. It will also get much worse if the US stays. The time to start planning for the aftermath is now, but lets be clearheade in realizing that that aftermath will be radically different in its horrors depending upon Bush’s actions.

As I promised, this is not a satisfyingly coherent post. But perhaps, somewhere, there’s an idea or two that could spark some interesting thoughts for you.