[Dialogue] Set a Date and Buy Some Leverage

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

Set a Date and Buy Some Leverage  
By _THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per) 
NY Times, Published: December 8, 2006
 
The brutally honest Baker-Hamilton assessment of the Iraq morass implies that 
 we need to leave Iraq if the factions there don’t get their act together, 
but it  also urges a last-ditch effort to enlist the help of Syria and Iran to 
salvage  something decent. Both are good suggestions, but they will only have a 
chance of  being effective if we go one notch further and set a fixed date — 
now — for  America to leave Iraq.  
The only hope of moving the factions inside Iraq, not to mention Syria and  
Iran, toward reconciliation is if we have leverage over them, which we now 
lack.  The currency of Middle East politics is pain. And right now, all the pain 
is  being inflicted on us and on Iraqi civilians. Only if we tell all the 
players  that we are leaving might we create a different balance of pain and 
therefore  some hope for a diplomatic deal. Trying to do diplomacy without the 
threat of  pain is like trying to play baseball without a bat. 
Yes, yes, I know, the conventional wisdom is that if the U.S. sets a date to  
leave Iraq the whole Middle East will explode in a Shiite-Sunni war. Maybe, 
but  maybe not. 
Let’s play this out. What happens if we set a date to leave? The war in Iraq  
will get worse, but for how long? Right now our troops are providing a floor  
under the civil war that allows some parties to behave outrageously or make  
impossible demands — because they know that we won’t let things spin totally 
out  of control. Would they behave more cautiously if they knew they had to 
pay  retail for their madness? I’d like to find out. 
Moreover, while our presence in Iraq helps control the situation, it also  
aggravates it. For many Sunnis, and a growing number of Shiites, we’ve become  “
occupiers” to be resisted. Our leaving will both unleash violence and 
eliminate violence. 
As for the neighbors, well, right now Iran, Syria and some other Arab states  
look at Iraq and clearly believe that the controlled chaos there is their  
friend. For Arab autocrats, chaos is their friend because a burning Iraq on Al  
Jazeera sends a message to their own people: “This is what happens to those 
who  try democracy.” And for Iran and Syria, anything that frustrates the U.S. 
in  Iraq and keeps America bleeding weakens its ability to confront Tehran.  
The minute we leave, chaos in Iraq is not their friend anymore. First of all, 
 if there is a full-fledged civil war, Syria, a largely Sunni country, will 
have  to support the Iraqi Sunnis. Shiite Iran will have to support the Iraqi 
Shiites.  That would mean Iran and Syria, now allies, will be on opposite sides 
of the  Iraqi civil war. That will leave them with the choice of either 
indirectly  fighting each other or working to settle the war. 
Moreover, right now we are “Mr. Big” in Iraq, soaking up all the popular  
anger. But the minute we’re gone, Iran becomes “Mr. Big” and the age-old  
tensions between Iraqi Arab Shiites and Iranian Persian Shiites will surface.  Iran 
and Moktada al-Sadr will be at each other’s throats. 
Also, as long as our troops are in Iraq, we are pinned down and an easy  
target for Iran to hit, should we ever want to strike its nuclear facilities.  
Once we are out, we will have much more room to maneuver. I’m not saying we  
should attack Iran, but I am saying Iran will be much more worried that we will.  
As for the Arab states, they’ve done little to promote peace in Iraq. They’
ve  basically said to America: “You can’t leave and we won’t help.” O.K., we’
re  leaving. You still don’t want to help? The only thing the Arab regimes 
fear more  than democracy is fragmentation. 
As I’ve written before, our real choices in Iraq are 10 months or 10 years.  
Either we commit the resources to entirely rebuild the place over a decade, 
for  which there is little support, or we tell everyone that we will be out 
within 10  months, or sooner, and we’ll deal with the consequences from afar. We 
need to  start the timer — today, now.  
As long as we’re in Iraq, Iraq implodes,  and we absorb a lot of the pain. 
The minute we leave, Iraq explodes — or at least no one can be sure it won’t  — 
and that is a real threat to the Iraqi factions and neighbors. Even facing  
that reality might not knock enough sense into them to compromise, but at least 
 then they’ll have their medieval religious war without us. 
Only that threat will give us leverage. Yes, it would be a sad end to our  
involvement there. But everything Iraq’s leaders have done so far suggests that  
a united, democratic and pluralistic Iraq is their second choice. Tribal  
politics is still their first choice. We can’t go on having our first-choice  
kids dying for their second choice. 

 
Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
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