Just as it was in 2004, the war in Iraq may be the most explosive issue in this year’s presidential race. John McCain and Hillary Clinton both supported the war back in 2003, while Barack Obama opposed it from the beginning. Today, McCain is the only contender who continues to advocate the occupation in Iraq, while Clinton and Obama both have presented plans for phased withdrawals of American troops.
While it will certainly be a factor in the November election, the legitimacy of the argument for war five years ago should not affect our future strategy in Iraq. Regardless of the reasons for the war and however flawed they may have been, we have invested a significant amount of resources and human life into this conflict, and to abandon it now in defeat would be a catastrophic failure. There is still a great deal of fighting among the Iraqi people as well as with American forces, and the Iraqi government is not suited to handle such conflict without the help of our military. An immediate or substantial phased withdrawal of troops would leave the country in political and social disarray, as countless innocent Iraqis would lose their lives and the forces of radical Islam would find yet another safe haven in the Middle East. Exiting Iraq now would leave the Iraqi people no better off than they were during the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein.
An immediate exit would also send a message to the terrorist forces in Iraq that the Americans can be defeated, and would give them the momentum and motivation to attack us elsewhere. The enemy of Islamic extremism that America faces today is unlike any we have ever encountered before. Winning this war will not mean a formal surrender or signing of a peace treaty as has been customary in the past, and to some extent the broader “War on Terror” may never be completely won. However, it is vital to our national security to oppose radical Islam wherever it presents itself, and to forge alliances with moderate Arab nations. A free and stable Iraq, along with Afghanistan, would serve as two pivotal allies for the United States in the years to come as we face new challenges such as the Iranian nuclear threat and political instability in Pakistan.
John McCain was lambasted in the media several weeks ago when he suggested that we might stay in Iraq for another 100 years if necessary. While this statement seems drastic at first, once it is put into context it becomes considerably more plausible. Sixty years after World War II, the United States still has 75,000 troops deployed in Germany, 40,000 in Japan and 10,000 in Italy. And 50 years after the Korean War there are still 30,000 American troops stationed in South Korea. To suggest that decades from now we may still have a considerable military presence in Iraq, a strategically located nation in a region with a long history of political upheaval and military conflict, is not as shocking of a statement as it has been portrayed in the media.
There is somewhat of a historical precedent to the modern day conflict in Iraq. During the ’80s, America embarked on a similar mission when it funded Afghan rebels in their efforts to expel the Soviet puppet government from Afghanistan. While the rebels won and the tyrannical government was defeated, the Cold War was already coming to an end and the United States did little to stabilize the region and implement a legitimate form of government. Twenty years later, radical Islam had taken root in Afghanistan and the Taliban government provided safe harbor to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist organization. We face a similar predicament in Iraq today. While one oppressive regime has been successfully defeated, another one will surely replace it if we do not take the necessary steps to stabilize the region and give the Iraqi people an alternative to extremism.
Joseph Goddard is a junior political science major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
