They Want Us Out

A poll recently conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org found that seven out of ten Iraqis want the U.S. to commit to a withdrawal plan and be out of Iraq within the year. The same study found that a vast majority of Iraqis feel that U.S. military presence actually provokes more insurgency than it prevents (something that doesn’t seem too farfetched to me) and that if the U.S. created a plan for withdrawal, the Iraqi government would actually be strengthened

Those are some very interesting findings that present some even more interesting questions. We’ll start with this one: since it’s pretty clear that the Iraqis want us to leave, should we finally come up with a decent plan and get the hell out?

The Bush administration would certainly say the answer to that question is no. We’ve made the mess and we’ve got to “stay the course.” We’ve got to see Iraq through its early stages of democracy like a parent walks behind a child just learning to ride a bike. Eventually, as the Bushies see it, Iraq’s going to be like that little kid on the bike: everything will click and the kid, err Iraq, will ride off into the sunset as a thriving democracy.

As valid as some of those points are, the people of Iraq want American troops out, so shouldn’t we grant them that wish and just leave? To this point, we’ve already messed things up pretty badly for them. Some forty thousand Iraqi civilians have fallen to American or insurgency fire. Countless more have lost their homes, and the fear of car bombs and suicide attackers has supplanted that of the unyielding dictator now facing trial for crimes against humanity. On top of that, the American death toll keeps growing. And while the administration says that there is unseen progress in Iraq, progress that the U.S. cameras don’t see and don’t want to see, it doesn’t seem like things are getting much better. So we can leave now, save some American lives, make the Iraqi people happy, and hope from afar that the prediction that American withdrawal will lead to a stronger central government comes true.

That leads perfectly into our next question: if we choose option two and pull out, if we pull the old cut and run (what’s that even mean?), and the situation in Iraq continues to worsen, who shoulders the blame? Would the U.S. be in the wrong simply because we made the mess and didn’t stick around long enough to clean it up? Would the Iraqis be at fault because they wanted us out, claiming that we actually did more harm than good and that they could do a better job themselves?

Looks to me like we're in a lose/lose situation.