Ted Koppel wrote a very interesting Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times, entitled "Look What Democratic Reform Dragged In":
http://select.nytimes.com/...
It's behind the subscription barrier, alas. His primary source is an unnamed Jordanian diplomat, and while roundly castigating the Bush administration for its many short-sighted actions (and consequent failures) in the Middle East, he comes to an interesting conclusion:
In his analysis, the implication that this decade may witness a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq has begun to produce an inclination in the region toward appeasing Iran.
It is in Iraq, he told me, "where the United States and the coalition forces must confront the Iranians.'' He added, "You must build up your forces in Iraq and you must announce your intention to stay."
More on the flip...
After the 2004 election, I personally found myself moving out of the so-called Pottery Barn camp ("You break it, you bought it") into the "let's bring our soldiers home immediately" camp. However, in light of the recent escalation of violence in Israel and Lebanon, I'm beginning to re-evaluate my own position. Koppel's column highlights many of my own reservations.
He reserved his greatest contempt for the policy of encouraging democratic reform. (snip)
Lest the point elude me, the official conducted a brief tour of recent democratic highlights in the region. (snip)
In each case, the intelligence officer reminded me, the beneficiary of those electoral victories is allied with and, to some degree, dependent upon Iran. Over the past couple of months alone, he told me, Hamas has received more than $300 million in cash, provided by Iran and funneled through Syria. He told me what has now become self-evident to the residents of Haifa: namely, that Iran has made longer-range and more powerful rockets and missiles available to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. We'll come back to the subject of Iraq.
Undoubtedly, the US is in a dreadful position at the moment, due in large part to the disastrous current occupation of Iraq. However, as the situation in the region has worsened dramatically in the last 2 years, and in particular in the last month, it seems unreasonable that a sound foreign policy would remain rigid and unyielding. Isn't this precisely what we accuse the Bush administration of?
I have no delusions of grandeur as to my personal ability to shape Democratic foreign policy ideas. But I think that this argument is worth discussing, and makes it worthwhile to re-examine the potential effects of an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
One possible solution which was mentioned in the spring (and promptly ignored) came from Senator Joe Biden (D-DE). I find Biden generally wrong about many things, but his suggestion of removing all but 30,000 troops was perhaps a good one. His idea was to leave those 30,000 troops as border guards- to ensure that the inevitable civil war didn't spill outwards, and that foreign fighters also not join the fray, whether they were from Iran, or Turkey, or any number of other places.
I disagree with Koppel (or his source) in his analysis of the US' track record:
According to the Jordanian intelligence officer, Iran is reminding America's traditional allies in the region that the United States has a track record of leaving its friends in the lurch -- in Vietnam in the 70's, in Lebanon in the 80's, in Somalia in the 90's.
I don't think those are particularly useful parallels. However, we do have a dire example from the recent past of what happens when a country is no longer politically expedient for occupation: Afghanistan, abandoned by the US when it was no longer necessary as a proxy for the fight against the USSR, was a power vacuum that gave rise to the Taliban. Do we feel comfortable leaving such a vacuum in Iraq, with the certain knowledge that it will be exploited by Tehran?
I'm not certain any more.