Saturday, March 29, 2008

Ending the occupation of Iraq

By Libby

I'm fighting off the grog from too much sleep today and sloughing through the depressing news. I'm not finding much I feel like talking about but Zbigniew Brzezinski has an op-ed in the WaPo worth reading on how to end the Iraq occupation with some measure of grace. I thought this was his best point.
Contrary to Republican claims that our departure will mean calamity, a sensibly conducted disengagement will actually make Iraq more stable over the long term. The impasse in Shiite-Sunni relations is in large part the sour byproduct of the destructive U.S. occupation, which breeds Iraqi dependency even as it shatters Iraqi society. In this context, so highly reminiscent of the British colonial era, the longer we stay in Iraq, the less incentive various contending groups will have to compromise and the more reason simply to sit back. A serious dialogue with the Iraqi leaders about the forthcoming U.S. disengagement would shake them out of their stupor.
The truth is, no one can predict what effect withdrawing our military support would have on Iraq or the situation in the Middle East generally but it seems unlikely that it could be significantly worse than the all too apparent results our continued occupation is currently generating.

On a related note, I posted the funniest quote of the day at Newshoggers.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Sweating Through fog said...

As I wrote here, we're stuck with a dogged, inflexible Churchill, when we need the flexibility of a Chamberlain. We should get out of the Mid East entirely.

10:11:00 AM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Hey STF. Good post although I don't agree with a lot of it, particularly the four points on why we invaded Iraq. No. 4 seems to be the only valid one to me.

But I loved your post on feminism. Good blog. Thanks for commenting and do please drop by again.

10:50:00 AM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

Depends on what you mean by "get out of" True isolationism has quite a record of producing wars.

I would take issue with your "surge is working" idea too, since the battle is raging at the moment and the 5 year graph of US casualties shows we've had other lulls with fewer losses early on.

I would also argue against the "we were looking for WMD" point. I don't think we had any basis for believing in them and it was bogus from the beginning. I think the documentary evidence is strong. There wasn't any real evidence - and still isn't - for any pact between bin Laden and Saddam either nor do I think we have to assume alliances between the many countries that dislike us just because Hitler tried to screw Stalin.

Other than that you make some good points.

10:56:00 AM  

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