U.S. Iraq Withdrawal a Gift to Iran? No, the U.S. Iraq Invasion Was the Gift to Iran
Hey, it's from Time "magazine." Don't expect much. Ted Carpenter isn't much better. He covers the same ground, bemoaning the fact that the destruction of Saddam's regime didn't solve all of our Middle East problems for all eternity, arguing this proves that we should have left Saddam in power. But this idiocy cannot be glossed over as just more inanity with a different by-line:
Most of them either ignore the point or barely mention it in passing that George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, signed the agreement to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Bush needed an agreement before he left office, and getting one required a limited time frame. I have no doubt that Carpenter would have complained bitterly if the agreement had been "open ended" for all time. The simple fact is that the agreement was a bridge agreement to a future agreement. It bought time both for Iraqis to get used to post-America Iraq and for the Obama administration to get used to not abandoning Iraq. Carpenter himself concedes that the administration failed to get a new agreement.
Saying the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a gift to Iran is like saying the destruction of Hitler's regime was a gift to Stalin's Soviet Union. Is it too nuanced to appreciate that even bad people can like something we do in our own interests? Seriously, Saddam was evil to us, to pro-American Arabs like Kuwait, and to anti-American Iran. Perhaps 400,000 to 600,000 Iranians died fighting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Of-freaking-course Iran was happy to see Saddam go. But they were not happy to see us arrive in force. So yes, our departure is far more of a gift to Iran than the invasion. The invasion was in our interest, too. Our departure is not in our interest.
And saying that Iraq has an Iran-friendly government is wrong. Iraq has had an Iran-fearful government. Iran has friends in Iraq. I won't dispute that. But Iraqis don't want Iran to run their lives. But as long as Iraqis fear that America won't defend Iraq until Iraq is strong enough to resist Iran on their own, Iraqi politicians and policy have to take Iran into account to avoid angering them. In another context, the magazine might be touting that as "smart" diplomacy.
I won't even say that withdrawing from Iraq is a gift to Iran. It makes our task more difficult. But we can still win the post-New Dawn struggle for Iraq despite our withdrawal.
What worries me isn't that Iran wants to win that struggle. Nor is the narrow fact that our military won't be there to defend Iraq what worries me most. Like I've written, it makes our job more difficult--but not impossible.
What worries me is that our failure to get a deal with Iraq wasn't a failure of effort, but a decision by our administration not to seek an agreement. Have we decided not to struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq? I can't imagine we'd be that dumb. I surely think the Obama administration has learned that our bad relations with Iran aren't the fault of George W. Bush that needs only proper outreach to correct.
But maybe I'm suffering from a lack of imagination. Refusing to fight would be ultimate the gift to Iran. And if Iran wins Iraq because we won't fight them, I'm sure there will be plenty who will say it proves them right all along.
