it's time to go, I heard them say

I heard them say, it's time to go:

Handing over their bases or demolishing them if necessary, American forces will have to fall back on Baghdad. From Baghdad they will have to make their way to the southern port city of Basra, and from there back to Kuwait, where the whole misguided adventure began. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.

Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all.

via. I'm trying to work up a post justifying an ongoing hunch that conflict in Iraq is going to evolve into a modern version of the Thirty Years War, and not just because it revolves increasingly around confessional bloodshed. This is why I'm increasingly less interested in the politics of the thing. I think this wear, and the conflicts it will trigger will shape politics going forward in a fairly profound way, rather than just add information proving or disproving existing political beliefs.

But anyway; for another time.

Comments

[Jarndyce]

That's a good theory. I'll look forward to the 30YW post... it sounds like a credible scenario to me. FWIW, I'm not sure that something like it wouldn't have happened anyway, whatever occurred in Iraq. Let's face it, a bunch of sclerotic totalitarian or theocratic/near-theocratic states built along imaginary lines in the sand and propped up with a combination of oil money, savage secret police systems and parasitic western capitalist interests could never survive long. At the very latest, it would have happened when the oil started to dry up. I'm absolutely amazed they made it this far, to be honest.

[dearieme]

Perhaps the dimmest thing I've read about Iraq was "This is the biggest (British) Foreign Affairs blunder since Suez." An underestimate by several orders of magnitude, I'd think.

[Richard]

Interesting post. But do you mind not using the phrase "going forward"?

[Paul Lyon]

Actually, West thru' Jordan and North thru' Turkey seem better routes out of Iraq. The Turks did not want the U.S. invading Iraq from their country, but perhaps they won't be so opposed to the U.S. leaving Iraq that way.

West thru' Jordan, of course, goes thru' Anbar province, but the article suggests the need for the U.S. to provide military support for Jordan.

Anyway they can leave safely is probably to the good, the sooner the better. A serious question, tho' is whether Washington will want to hold on to the permanent bases that the Pentagon is building.