I largely agree with the main points made in Paul Berman's article in The New Republic yesterday regarding Obama's debate performance, including that he seemed, on a gut level, serious about not allowing Iran a nuclear weapon, even if that meant very grim consequences that more cowboy-type presidents (and candidates) tend to gloss over (i.e. full-scale war is the only way to stop the program, in sanctions don't work; bombing won't work and will strengthen the Iranian regime's hand at home by providing them with an external enemy).
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109018/obama-two-most-revealing-moments-in-last-nights-debate
However, I strongly disagree with Berman's implication that Obama is glossing over a failure when he boasts of removing troops from Iraq, because certain unspecified 'people in our military'--which body of people includes hundreds of thousands of officers, not a few of which (though certainly not the majority, who tend to be sensible and competent people) have a bit of wingnuttery in them--believe the US could have done better by leaving a few troops in Iraq for 'post-bellum policing.'
Berman:
"It annoys me that Obama keeps boasting about having ended the war in
Iraq, when all he means is that he failed to push hard enough to secure a
"status of forces" agreement with the Iraqi government. And then he
pulled out the American military—though if he had, in fact, secured an
agreement, the American military people could have retained a base or
two in Iraq and, if the bases were big enough, might have lent a helping
hand to the Iraqis. Not war, but post-bellum policing. There are people
in our own military who seem to think so, anyway."
As someone who served in Iraq in 2005, I fail to see how keeping 10-30,000 troops in Iraq, at this point to some indefinite one in the future, would serve American interests, especially since Iraq has a quasi-functional government and police-force, and since getting further involved in their sectarian mess could be a nightmare. I can also testify first-hand to the resentment regular Kuwaitis harbor toward the Americans based there, despite our obvious role in providing them security and stability since 1990 against larger, sometimes dangerous neighbors. My perception of our relationship with the Arab world includes the insight that the thing Arabs hate most about the US is when we have troops stationed in their sovereign nations on a long-term basis. It tends to build resentment, as well as suspicion that their governments are our puppets, as well as generally giving them an excuse to blame bad things on the US--which sometimes is true (hey, we kind of screwed things up in Iraq from 2003-2006, I think it's fair to say), but which is also often simple conspiracy theory. It's also worth noting that the main casus belli (as it were) for Al Qaeda pre 9-11-2001 was the presence of US troops in bases in Saudi Arabia.
The only plausible justification I can come up with for advocating such a continuing troop presence (in Iraq) is the idea that the US could be trusted with non-sectarian policing in sensitive areas, where the Shia and Sunni powers don't trust each other to command security efforts. However, I have not seen anyone, neither Berman nor less nuanced thinkers like, say, Governor Romney, who supports a continued troop presence, as did his former rival Texas governor Rick Perry in an exaggerated manner, making this argument in any coherent form. Is it too much to ask HOW a continued US troop presence in Iraq would serve our interests in that region and the world, or to note a conspicuous absence of actual argumentation to the effect it would do this.
Really, what we should be looking for is a balanced cost-benefit analysis of the situation, but clearly that's WAY too much to ask for.
No comments:
Post a Comment