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The Costs of Withdrawing From Iraq
Even critics of the Iraq War believe that pulling our troops out precipitously would be a disaster. From a great piece over at Opinionjournal.com.
From Brent Scowcroft, dean of the realist school of thought on Iraq:
“The costs of staying are visible; the costs of getting out are almost never discussed. If we get out before Iraq is stable, the entire Middle East region might start to resemble Iraq today. Getting out is not a solution.”
From Anthony Zinni, former Centcom Commander and a vociferous critic of what he sees as the administration’s naive and one-sided policy in Iraq and the broader Middle East:
“When we are in Iraq we are in many ways containing the violence. If we back off we give it more room to breathe, and it may metastasize in some way and become a regional problem. We don’t have to be there at the same force level, but it is a five- to seven-year process to get any reasonable stability in Iraq.”
From John Burns, Baghdad reporter from the New York Times on “The Charlie Rose Show”:
“If you pull out now, and catastrophe ensues, then it is very likely that the United States would have to come back in circumstances which, of course, would be even less favorable, one might imagine, than the ones that now confront American troops here.”
Not to mention the victory that Al Qaeda would claim and how this would embolden The Enemy to blow up more buildings, airports and subways.
Staying is tough. Leaving would be disastrous.
There is an answer: win. We must stabilize this fledgling democracy so it can give the Iraqi people the freedom they want and the liberty they deserve.
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