I know the consensus position at daily Kos seems to be: withdrawl from Iraq as soom as humanly possible (with appropriate caveats for doing so in a safe and orderly manner). I've never been fully comfortable with this-- to the extent that we essentially broke their country and bear the moral responsibility for the consequences. This would seem to demand the exertion of every resource at our disposal to make things right, and the potential for a genocidal bloodbath in the aftermath of a US withdrawl is very real. At the same time, our presence there doesn't appear to be helping matters and the situation is both untenable and murderous.
Via Sullivan, I found an article in the Boston Globe that has a proposal I find relatively promising, and not incompatible with a speedy withdrawl of American troops. That is: draft every man in Iraq between the ages of 18 and 35 into service.
http://www.boston.com/...
Do we have the infrastructure to make something like this work? Could the Iraqi government be persuaded to implement something like it?
I don't think Bush can or will pursue it; it's a statist rather than being free market solution. Moreover, there is a tendency to envision Iraqi insurgents as wild-eyed muslim fanatics looking to blow themselves up in an excess of religious fervor.
The unemployment rate in Iraq is over 60%. That breeds poverty, desperation, and a population of bored, hopeless, angry young men with nothing to do and looking for someone to blame. This adresses that directly. Moreover, it would promote national identity and undermine sectarian ties. These have to be looked at as major root causes of the violence presently wracking the country. $30 billion is a steep pricetag, but we're spending many times that amount of money on military operations right now, to no great effect.
Is an Iraqi draft an approach worth pursuing?
Is there any mechanism by which we can leave Iraq without leaving a colossal, potentially genocidal, civil war (potentially resulting in a repressive theocracy or spreading into a wider regional conflict)?