For the Kurds

Summary:
This article in the NY Review of Books really has me thinking about Iraq. Basically it says that the benchmarks are bunk, there won't be much more violence than there is now, and there is a better option than Biden's three-way partition.

I haven't read a more convincing article about Iraq than this one in the New York Review of Books. It basically slaps down most of my arguments and concerns. First, it says that Iraq will not really fall apart after we leave.

But there will be no Saigon moment in Iraq. Iraq's Shiite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaeda, or a more inclusive Sunni front. Iraq's Shiites are three times as numerous as Iraq's Sunni Arabs; they dominate Iraq's military and police and have a powerful ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that might support the Sunnis are small, far away (vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi population centers), and can only provide money, something the insurgency has in great amounts already.

Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today—a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic, and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.

It also says there is really no chance for success through American troops and the benchmarks that Congress is so fond of.

But even if Iraq's politicians could agree to the benchmarks, this wouldn't end the insurgency or the civil war. Sunni insurgents object to Iraq being run by Shiite religious parties, which they see as installed by the Americans, loyal to Iran, and wanting to define Iraq in a way that excludes the Sunnis. Sunni fundamentalists consider the Shiites apostates who deserve death, not power. The Shiites believe that their democratic majority and their historical suffering under the Baathist dictatorship entitle them to rule. They are not inclined to compromise with Sunnis, whom they see as their longstanding oppressors, especially when they believe most Iraqi Sunnis are sympathetic to the suicide bombers that have killed thousands of ordinary Shiites. The differences are fundamental and cannot be papered over by sharing oil revenues, reemploying ex-Baathists, or revising the constitution. The war is not about those things.

The author also makes really good points about how Iraqi politicians aren't able to achieve any of the benchmarks anyway; the political coalitions are weak and divided, and the leaders have learned how to move slow and avoid action. So what is to be done about this?

Iraq's Kurdish leaders and Iraq's dwindling band of secular Arab democrats fear that a complete US withdrawal will leave all of Iraq under Iranian influence. Senator Hillary Clinton, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke are among the prominent Democrats who have called for the US to protect Kurdistan militarily should there be a withdrawal from Iraq. The argument for so doing is straightforward: it secures the one part of Iraq that has emerged as stable, democratic, and pro-Western; it discharges a moral debt to our Kurdish allies; it deters both Turkish intervention and a potentially destabilizing Turkish– Kurdish war; it provides US forces a secure base that can be used to strike at al-Qaeda in adjacent Sunni territories; and it limits Iran's gains.

For the longest time I have been convinced that a regional war would erupt if we left. This article did a good job of making me reconsider that. But as convincing as this all is, I still think violence internally would increase. Without American troops, Sadr's militia would have no one holding them back at all and Sunni attacks could conceivably increase even more.

What I really like though is the idea that we would stay to protect the Kurds (and prevent Turkey from invading). This plan is far more reasonable than Biden's proposal to partition the country into three (although as well as things are going, I suppose that should be left on the table). And I like that while it talks about American withdrawal, it is mindful of the country we are leaving behind. I never got the impression that people like Richardson (or Vilsack) were too concerned with Iraqis at this point.