[x-factor]

Originally Posted by x-factor

1) Pulling out of Iraq allows us to focus our limited resources on a country where the population is more supportive of US/NATO troops on their soil...by extension, we can win definitively in Afghanistan (implicitly including capturing/killing of UBL and Zawahiri).

Pulling out of Iraq would allow us to focus more resources on Afghanistan and potentially, to win decisively. Even so, the "win in Afghanistan instead" argument is a red herring. Its better to continue with a grinding draw in both than to lose in Iraq.

2) By pulling out of Iraq we rehabilitate our international image thereby renewing the US/European friendship, adding Arab support, and sapping the jihadist movement of its cause celebre.

This is also a fundamentally flawed position. Pulling out of a stable Iraq (which i would assume is everyone's goal) would rehabilitate our image in the Arab world because it would prove what we've said the entire time, that we were not their to exploit, but to liberate. Pulling out at this stage will be viewed as an unequivocal defeat. Not only that but any horrors that follow will be blamed on the US by all sides: Sunnis will blame us for empowering the Shia, Kurds will blame us for abandoning them (again), the religious Shia will blame us for empowering the Sunni, the secular Shia will blame us for abandoning them, and the rest of the world (esp Europe) will continue to blame us for upsetting the apple cart in the first place.

In short, the damage to our international reputation is already done. The only way to mitigate it is to persevere to some sort of positive end.

3) Pulling out of Iraq also allows us to "reconstitute" the "broken" military.

While its true that the military needs a certain amount of reconstituting after the incredibly wearing op tempo of the last 5 years, this argument puts the cart completely before the horse. Having a superior military is a means, not an end. Pulling out to reconstitute the military amounts to pulling out to reconstitute just to go back in in 5, 10, or 15 years and under worse circumstances.

4) Pulling out of Iraq will force the Iraqi government and populace to reconcile and the other countries in the region to assist in reconstruction, all out of their own self interests in avoiding a civil and/or regional war.

TR said it best: overpositive assumptions got us into this mess. Hoping that a withdrawal will prompt a national reconciliation is pie in the sky. Polling and anecdotal reporting clearly shows that the only thing stopping an all out civil war is a tenuous trust in the impartiality of the US military. Faith in the neighboring countries' good will is likewise a pipe dream. Lebanon could not be clearer proof of that.

In my opinion, TS (1119) and TR (1124) nailed the most likely scenario to follow a precipitous US withdrawal from Iraq: a mega-Lebanon governed as city-states and regional warlords beholden to outside powers. Whether that situation would evolve into something else is more difficult to see.

Ethnic cleansing could reorder the demographics and create three relatively homogeneous states or the Shia majority could succeed in establishing order over the whole country, but I think its most likely that the country would just continue to limp along in a state of general neo-feudal chaos, just as Lebanon has.

A key question is where the next center of jihad would be following a US withdrawal from Iraq. There'd be a certain amount of flow back to Afghanistan, but I think its more likely that jihadists, using Iraq as a base, would target Jordan and/or Lebanon as the next logical step. Lebanon offers a staging area for attacks against Israel as well as an opportunity to kill "Crusaders" (meaning the European peacekeepers) on Muslim soil. Jordan also offers the same opportunity to strike Israel, as well as allowing them to "encircle" Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, going after Jordan give the jihadists a chance to campaign against King Abdullah, the most vocal and visible moderate/Westernized/apostate ruler in the Muslim world. Add to this the emotional satisfaction in "avenging" Zarqawi and I think Jordan would find itself under siege very soon after the fall of Iraq.