The Current Discussion: The Obama administration has finally set a date for withdrawing U.S. troops for Iraq. If ethnic strife returns there, raising again the specter of civil war, should the U.S. send troops back in?
The promise of a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is a welcome sign, even though one would argue that leaving behind 30,000 troops is less of a disengagement and more of an acknowledgment that the rebuilding of Iraq's political and security apparatuses is an indefinite process. The past six odd years have not yielded the political and social stability that was planned for Iraq, with civil strife, sectarian hate and political malaise all thrown into the pot. The reasons for this are varied. Do countries with extreme dictatorships suddenly transform themselves into democracies overnight? Whether we like it or not, the fact is Iraq's history was more as a secular Arab country than an ethnically and religiously divided country, with a strong central government ensuring the secular nature of the social fabric.
The unleashing of pent up social frustrations and the imbalance of wealth and power all exploded into civil strife of the past six years. Add to that the anger of an occupied nation where the will of the people was ignored and the promise of a better future after Saddam Hussein just never materialized. The question remains, will the country be free from civil strife after most U.S. troops have left?
This depends on the political process that will follow, on government efforts to re-enfranchise elements of Iraqi society and to bring back a sense of public safety and economic possibility. To expect that there will be no civil strife is naïve. But to think that the security of the country can only depend upon U.S. troops is only propagating the policies of the past six years. We will have learned nothing from history. It has to be the Iraqi people who have to find a solution, not Washington, Tehran or anyone else. Yes, there are security and political interests that the U.S. may want to protect, but these have to be done via state-to-state dialogue. U.S. policy makers fail to understand that invading countries does not solve problems in the long term; there has to be a home-grown solution from the people of Iraq themselves.
The U.S. should think of more productive ways of helping the Iraqi people, spending the $200 billion on the people of Iraq rather than fighting a war with the people of Iraq. Investments into infrastructure, schools, health and job creation are the best way to fight the scourge of the militant elements in any society - it's in these areas that they truly fall short.
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