THEN WHAT???

Suppose one day Congress grew a pair and managed, somehow, to force Dubya to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq? Eight months go by, the C-140s and troop transports bring all of our brothers and sisters out of the desert and ship them back home, alive and well, to cheers and welcome relief of friends and families. Iraq now stands alone, out from the ineffable umbrella of the American war machine.

Then what? What will happen to the Iraqi people when U.S. troops leave? What will happen to the Iraqi Government? What will become of those good, freedom loving proto-Americans we tried so hard to liberate?


Collateral Damage
Well, for starters, ten thousand fewer Iraqis will be killed each month due to the lack of American counter-insurgency operations. As it stands now, somewhere in Iraq, civilians are fired on by U.S. troops at least six or seven times a day. And I'm not talking about celebrated "anti-terrorism" missions against Al Qaida members carrying bin Laden's picture in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. Most of these involve apparently random acts of violence. For example, a seventeen year old catches a stray bullet when insurgents start a firefight with U.S. troops in a crowded neighborhood. Or a man walking home from work (if he's lucky enough to have a job) bumps into an American patrol doing door-to-door searches and is immediately gunned down by a jittery Private who thinks he saw a weapon. Or a journalist has her car shot up at a checkpoint when her car is mistaken for a vehicle-borne IED. Three hundred Iraqis loose their lives every day in this manner: more than insurgent car bombs and death squad murders combined.

American troops (generally speaking) don't kill civilians because they're bloodthirsty maniacs. They kill civilians because they're in an extremely cluttered environment, rich in both targets and non-combatants. If your patrol is taking fire from an apartment building full of insurgents, you drop two JDAMs on it and get fifty dead insurgents; if you bomb the wrong building, or if there were civilians living in that building, or if the bombs miss their target and blow up the apartment building next to it, or if the blast collapses another building, or even if the insurgents are only using a small part of the building unbeknownst to its other residents, then you end up with fifty dead insurgents and a hundred dead civilians. And it gets even worse in the aftermath, as residents flee the smoldering rubble of their demolished homes and end up running into the line of fire of frightened, angry American troops who don't really have a reason to make sure the person they're shooting at is actually holding a weapon.

Either way, the U.S. military has the kind of extreme firepower and combat training that even Iraq's saltiest insurgents could only dream about. It's a testament to the power of the Greatest Country on Earth™: America kills more people by accident than the Sunni insurgency is capable of killing on purpose (and a raging bull can do more damage to a china shop than a thief).


Terrorist Safe Haven
But what about those insurgents? If U.S. troops leave, what's to stop Al Qaida from taking over the entire country and turning it into a new Taliban State?

This raises another interesting question: how exactly is Al Qaida going to succeed where the Greatest Country on Earth™ failed?

The short answer is, they won't. The lack of U.S. troops means the gloves come off for Iraq's militias. In that case, the civil war no longer has a referee, and the various factions can finally stop tiptoeing around and get to the serious and messy business of slaughtering each other until somebody wins. Al Qaida in Iraq--which is connected to bin Laden's al Qaida in name only--is a very small but very powerful extremist Sunni group, mostly consisting of foreigners. It is therefore extremely unpopular, hated by Shi'ite militias and civilians, and even by the majority of Sunnis. The absence of U.S. troops would probably result in a power vacuum that would give the Mahdi Army an opening to grab power, Iraq will fall into a quasi-theocracy similar to Iran, and the regrouping Shi'ite militias will simply massacre Al Qaida in Iraq.

It won't be a terrorist safe haven. At worst, it'll become an ally of Iran for the first time since the Shah was overthrown. Whether this becomes a good or a bad thing depends entirely on the actions and policies of future American Presidents, whether they want to go on pretending Iran is an enemy of the United States, or whether they might actually bother talking to the Iranian Government instead of hiring dictators, mercenaries and terrorists to try and overthrow it by proxy.


Islamic Republic of Iraq
Which, of course, leads to even bigger questions: how will the Al Maliki Government survive without U.S. troops supporting it?

It won't. Hell, it probably won't survive even with American troops acting as a crutch. But a competent dictator is still preferable to an incompetent democracy; as one returning U.S. soldier put it, "Under Saddam, Iraq was ruled with an iron fist. Spend a few months there and you'll understand why." As far as rulers go, though, we could do worse than Al Sadr. At the very least, the man has popular support from a good chunk of the Iraqi People (Sunnis hate him, though) which makes him the closest thing Iraq has to a Thomas Jefferson. A really creepy, violent, abusive version of Thomas Jefferson.

The problem with the American Fantasy of exporting democracy is that, on the whole, Islamic society doesn't want American-style democracy. Don't take that the wrong way, they definitely do want democratic government (and sometimes they even get it, much to the chagrin of the Bush Administration). But Islam is so ingrained in the cultural background of the middle east that trying to create a secular democracy in Iraq is a little like trying to impose Communism on Wallstreet. A genuine Islamic democracy is about the best you can hope for, and only Iraqis really know how to make that work. Unfortunately for our beloved Washington Imperialists, the kind of Iraqis who know how to make a popular Islamic democracy work don't particularly like the American government, and have no intention of becoming the next colony of the American Empire.


Sons of Liberty?
But how can America, the Leader of the Free World™, turn its back on "moderate" Iraqis who hope for peace and democracy in their country? Aren't we selling them out to Islamofascism?

As if. Bush likes to make references to America's revolutionary war. That's appropriate in principle, but not in application. America, today, is playing the same role as the British did two hundred and forty years ago: an imperial force with the most powerful military on the planet. Iran, ironically, plays the role of the French, who (as we Americans have apparently chosen to forget) used the American Revolution as just another excuse to piss off the British and, in the process, totally saved our asses. And I know it sucks, but all things being equal that means Iraq's growing insurgency (generally speaking) plays the role of the Sons of Liberty that sent the British packing and eventually setup their own version of democracy, according to their own sensibilities and values. And maybe that's a history lesson for America too; after all, the soldiers who fought for our independence committed more than their fair share of atrocities that we, as a morally sensitive people, have now conditioned ourselves not to remember.

As for Al Qaida in Iraq... they're the Hessians. Whether or not the CIA is actually writing their paychecks is a question for another time.


To The Boats!
What if the Terrorists in Iraq, emboldened by the withdrawal from our troops, use Iraq as a base to attack America? What if, instead of fighting them there, we end up having to fight them here?

I, for one, would be damn impressed. For one thing, they already have a base to attack America (in Pakistan, one of our supposed allies) and haven't yet bothered to do so since they're too busy trying to take back Afghanistan. If Al Qaida is in any way powerful enough over Iraq and Afghanistan and attack American soil all at the same time, you might want to think about stocking up on bottled water and moving to a fortress in the mountains. On the other hand, terrorists don't actually need a "base" from which to launch attacks; a studio apartment in South Jersey will suffice for that. As for "fighting them here," I suppose it's entirely possible that Iraqi insurgents will board a grand armada of canoes, row across the Atlantic and start suicide bombing Manhattan in a continuation of sectarian violence (probably targeting the two thousand or so Iraqi Sunnis living there). Otherwise, though, the bulk of insurgent violence in Iraq has been Iraqis fighting American troops--or other Iraqis--for uniquely Iraqi reasons, not in the least of which is a unified hatred of occupation.

We'll never have to worry about "fighting them here" for reasons which really don't need to be explained. Terrorists may be sneaky, and even a little imaginative, but it takes an army -- a real army -- to actually invade a country with the aim of widespread destruction. Even so-called "low intensity conflicts" like where special forces teams infiltrate a small country bent on blowing something up requires a chain of logistics (ships, technology, intelligence, communications, supplies, operatives and political backing) that Al Qaida simply doesn't have. As it stands, no matter what happens to Iraq, the biggest terrorist threat in America is actually domestic terrorism: an American-born, home-grown terrorist with a uniquely American motive. On some level, you probably know this already; try thinking of six places in Kyoto Japan that would make really good targets for somebody with truck, some explosives, and a really bad mood. That's no easy task if you've never been to Kyoto or haven't lived there for many years. But most of us can think of a few places in our own neighborhoods that, really, could use a little extra security.


Our "Enemy" Iran
And what happens to Iraq once U.S. troops are no longer there to curtail Iranian influence? How will we prevent Iran from meddling in the affairs of the new country, whatever direction it begins to take?

Stupid question. What exactly prevents America from meddling? Or do we assume that Iran doesn't have a legitimate reason to "meddle" in Iraq's affairs? I don't make that assumption, because I and the rest of the world do not assume that Washington D.C. is the Capitol of the World. Iran has a foreign policy, just like the United States has a foreign policy. Though, I should say Iran's foreign policy with regards to Iraq is probably all the more pertinent and immediate. They do share a nine hundred mile border with Iraq, which means they're not only in a much better position to help, but they're also much more likely to be directly effected if Iraq blows itself up, which gives them a much bigger reason to help. After all, terrorists aren't going to swim across the Atlantic and start bombing Manhattan, but there isn't much to stop them from walking across the border and murdering intellectuals in Tehran.

Actually, though, it's a stupid question because Iran -- contrary to Corporate Media spin -- is not America's enemy. We have never been to war with Iran, nor have we ever been attacked by Iran. We did support Saddam Hussein (remember that brutal insane dictator we removed from power a couple years ago?) when he tried to conquer Iran in the 1980s, at which time we funded and supported Iraq, bombed a couple of Iranian warships, and even shot down an Iranian Air Liner for good measure. Probably the worst thing Iran ever did to the United States was point and laugh when Hezbollah bombed the army barracks in Beirut (apart from the hostage crisis, of course, but college students are the enemy of mankind anyway).

Iran, like Venezuela, has been branded as an enemy of America for one specific reason: because their leaders aren't especially friendly to the U.S. Government (in Chavez's case, specifically because Chavez doesn't like Bush). It's sort of a running vice with Imperialists to declare anyone who doesn't glowingly applaud their every word and deed is, somehow, an enemy of all mankind. We at least know the President of Iran is strongly hostile to the Israeli Government for a whole host of reasons. Yet Israel isn't part of America, or even an ally of America, which doesn't matter anyway since the President of Iran doesn't make foreign policy decisions.

And if this so-called enemy manages to spread its influence to Iraq and produce an Iranian-friendly state instead of an American-friendly state, what are the consequences for America? God forbid, we might actually have to treat Iranian like a country again, and not just some sort of gigantic street gang with seventy million hostages.


The End of Occupation
So what happens to Iraq once American troops leave? That, obviously, is up to the Iraqis. Iraq is not part of America; Iraqis did not hold a popular referendum to have their country annexed as a U.S. territory (and considering 80% of them want us gone, we all know how that vote would go). Iraq's problems are not Americas problems, and only Iraq is capable of solving them. If they go and ask their neighbors in Iran for help, that will be an Iraqi decision; if a handful of them get Iranian help and most Iraqis get pissed, then that becomes an Iraqi argument. If Iraq decides it wants an Islamic theocracy modeled on Saudi Arabia, then that becomes an Iraqi problem. But if Iraqis can't take control of their own destiny, what right does America have to make that decision for them?

Besides the fact that our occupation there is, so far, causing more harm than good. Condie Rice likes to talk about the "birth pains" of democracy in the middle east, even while Bush has his fist elbow deep in the birth canal trying to drag the baby out by his neck.