It's not about "peace"

In response to Bush's disaster in Iraq, most of the left is calling for withdrawal and peace. The problem with this is the meaning of "peace".

When Bill Clinton was President we had "peace" with Iraq. Our government pushed the U.N. to have economic sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions resulted in the deaths of about a million Iraqi civilians, half of them children. When Clinton's Secretary of State was asked about this, she didn't deny it or argue, she just said she thought the cost was worth it. Whether America serves them "peace", or "war" or something in between, the number of dead kids is about the same.

For most Americans, Clinton's way (killing them with peace) was a lot more practical. Peace is cheaper. With peace, we didn't have our own soldiers dying, and we weren't giving a billion Moslems all those reasons to make terrorist attacks against us. Military contractor business interests do better with war, and oil interests do better with this war. The rest of us just pay for it. So for America, "peace" is slicker. But aren't we missing something, if the number of dead kids is the same either way?

The mainstream debate on Iraq is focussed on the question of early withdrawal. Bush and his gang argue that withdrawal would be a betrayal of our friends:

And we've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course. The message to the Iraqi citizens is, they don't have to fear that America will turn and run. And that's an important message for them to hear. If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course, many people will not continue to take a risk toward -- take the risk toward freedom and democracy.

Bush's critics argue that the Iraqis resent U.S. occupation, so our troop presence is a cause of the insurgency. For example, Rep. Murtha:

They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

Middle of the roaders like the High Democrats argue that if our troops pulled out, Iraq could fall into civil war.

The former first lady said an immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a "big mistake."
"It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us," she said.

This view is very broadly accepted. For example, last August Juan Cole wrote:

Personally, I think "US out now" as a simple mantra neglects to consider the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. For one thing, there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn't having a civil war in 2002. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean, unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in 1975-76, e.g. People often allege that the US military isn't doing any good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have never actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US military is keeping on what could be a volcano.

What will U.S. "withdrawal" mean?

In fact, if the U.S. "withdraws" from Iraq now, our air force will be supporting whoever we decide is the legitimate government there. The number of innocent civilians killed by our troops will certainly go up. Seymour Hersh brought this into the public debate:

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

This interacts with the drift toward civil war:

Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?” another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. “Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”

Unscrewing

I remember a story that when Gorbachev was trying to liberalize the Soviet Union, he went to Poland to meet the Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa. Walesa told him, "I've been an electrician all my working life, and I've never broken a screw putting them in. Screws always break when you're taking them out. Screwing isn't hard - unscrewing is."

In America's see-saw battle between liberals and conservatives, there have been many cases in which oppressive power was suddenly withdrawn. The results have generally been tragic. Let me give two examples:

Detroit

In 1967, police in Detroit raided an after-hours bar and arrested 82 patrons who were holding a party for two returned Vietnam War veterans. A small riot broke out. The police were withdrawn from the immediate area because they were outnumbered and because resentment of the police was in fact the cause of the riot. So after years of police brutality and excessive force, suddenly there was no police force. The result was an explosion of violence. This destroyed much of the city and the liberal coalition running it. Coleman Young wrote later:

"The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could."

Iran

In 1978, Jimmy Carter's administration attempted to push the Shah of Iran to a more democratic government. This resulted in a period of instability, in which reduced government repression resulted in an upwelling of protest, which was met with renewed government brutality. As the Shah's ability to manage government force fell apart, power fell into the hands of the theocracy. Carter's goal was to move Iran toward more democracy. It didn't happen for the Iranians, and the fallout for America and American liberalism was a disaster.

In both of these cases, the political response in America was an orgy of fingerpointing and blame. To this day, right wing bloggers rant about how Carter sold out our ally, the Shah. The race riots cemented the image of black crime and looting in the minds of the fleeing whites. Mayor Cavanaugh's response has formed more than 30 years of Republican campaign ads. Do we want the intervention in Iraq to end this way? Having destroyed their infrastucture and subjected them to this occupation, having drawn the Islamic Jihad to them, unleashed civil war and discredited the idea of democracy, shall we now allow our disfunctional politics to unscrew them blindly, impulsively, on the basis of slogans and election calendars?

All kinds of things can go on under names like "peace" and "withdrawal". A few writers have talked about this, Tom Engelhardt for example:

If you pay attention not to the war of words or the storm of confusing withdrawal proposals, but to four bedrock matters, you'll have a far better sense of where we're really heading. These are air power, permanent bases, an "American" Kurdistan, and oil; and, not surprisingly, they coincide with the great uncovered, or barely covered, stories of the war.

We aren't going to get out of this easily. Clear thinking is needed. Perhaps a change of slogans would help. Instead of "bring the troops home", how about "no more innocent victims"?