What are they putting in the water cooler over at the Cato Institute, once a bastion of reliably anti-interventionist scholarship and an invaluable resource for antiwar activists? I was reading Christopher Preble’s op ed on “How to Exit Iraq,” and everything was going along swimmingly –“there is only one rational option: a prompt military withdrawal” — and then came this:
“If Iraqis wish to retain their sovereignty and independence, they must ensure that al-Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups do not establish a safe haven in their country. Accordingly, the withdrawal of U.S. forces must be coupled with a clear and unequivocal message to the new government of Iraq: do not threaten us or allow foreign terrorists in your country to threaten us. If you do, we will be back.”
In other words, Iraqi “sovereignty” is entirely dependent on whether or not some Chalabi-esque character comes up with “intelligence” that links Iraq to “weapons of mass destruction.” And how, pray tell, could a fourth-rate power with a fifth-rate military possibly pose a “threat” to the mighty hyperpower?
Déjà vu, anyone? Oddly, for a supposed libertarian, Preble seems to have set out to prove the old Marxist aphorism that history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
What must even the most pro-American Iraqis feel as they are told that we’ll be back if Al Qaeda sets foot on Iraqi soil — when the terrorist incursion was made possible by the American invasion? Who turned Iraq into a ‘terrorist haven”?
That we are going to have to leave Iraq in worse shape than it was before the invasion is a given: war, after all, is mass death and destruction, and these conditions inevitably breed political extremism. Yet every moment we delay getting out swells Al Qaeda’s ranks. Gulf War II was a war of choice — and it was a bad choice. Just how bad is beginning to dawn even on those who gave Bush the benefit of a doubt.
Gil Guillory, who has been to Iraq, takes on yet another Cato bigwig, Tom Palmer, who argues that we can’t leave Iraq until the insurgents are “destroyed” and a functioning “democracy” is set up. Recalling the unanimity of his Iraqi contacts in favor of a swift U.S. withdrawal, Guillory writes:
“Their reasoning was that the longer the US military stayed, the more lasting would be US control of the Iraqi government, and the lesser chance for eventual political independence. If my colleagues’ opinions were representative of Iraqi opinion at large, and their opinions have not changed, then holders of the Palmer doctrine of withdrawal have a choice: either we let the Iraqis have a skinny freedom or impose a fat paternalism.”
What kind of a world are we living in when Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski are more anti-interventionist than the libertarian Cato Institute?
The more conditions we put on an American withdrawal, the deeper we sink into the Iraqi quagmire. Unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq is the only practical course — and the only moral one as well.
Of course. There are many contaminants in our water.