Preventing What We Prolong in Iraq

We’re all very well aware of the political predicament Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is currently facing. In a “damned if does, and damned if he doesn’t” scenario, Iraq’s political boss is stuck between the presumed necessity of US military support to secure his fragile government and the obvious friction a continued troop presence would create within his country.

He’s traipsing a very delicate line. On the one hand, Maliki has gone on the record stating that he doesn’t need parliamentary approval for the U.S. to leave behind an unknown number of troops to train their Iraqi soldiers and airmen to use the F-16s and air defense systems the U.S. sells Iraq. On the other, Maliki will not meet Leon Panetta’s brusque demand to [sic] “Damn it. Make a decision,” regarding a formal request for American troops to extend their stay past the scheduled December 2011 withdrawal.

As ever, Muqtada al-Sadr has inserted himself into the discussion. In response to Panetta’s claims that Iran is flooding Iraq with weapons, the radical cleric’s spokesman Salah al-Obeidi charged that Panetta had “openly mocked Iraq’s sovereignty and flaunted security agreements” signed by Washington and Baghdad in November 2008. “We are shocked by the lack of reaction from Iraqi political and military leaders,” he said.

What’s most alarming about this scenario is that the Defense chief is still struggling under the two fundamental misjudgments that have extended this senseless war. Panetta’s perspective is stuck in two parallel ruts: First of all, there is a presumption that America must maintain its troop presence to prevent a catastrophic collapse of state. Secondly, it is the burden of the U.S. military to combat the growing influence of Iran in Baghdad.

After all these years, one remarkably simple lesson escapes him. We cannot continue fighting what our presence makes inevitable. We cannot prevent civil war, state failure or safe haven for terror by providing tinder for all of the above.

If America overstays its formal departure date, Sadr’s bloc will abandon Maliki’s ruling parliamentary coalition. The parliament will collapse into a political melee. The fragile bureaucracy may follow. Violence will increase and people will die.

This is the reality facing Maliki. However, through the hysterically cracked prism that exists in Iraq, the aftermath of America’s troop withdrawal already exists. They’ve endured the blood bath, and the state survived civil war. One doubts things could get worse than they’ve already been, unless America stays to prevent what it actually prolongs.