With the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq, a special task force of scholars and policy experts calls into question the Bush administration's intention to stay as long as necessary. In this joint statement, the members argue that the presence of troops in Iraq distracts attention from fighting Al Qaeda and emboldens a new class of terrorists to take up arms against the United States. The task force's findings are essential reading for anyone concerned with the ongoing conflict and the war on terrorism

EXITING IRAQ

WHY THE U.S. MUST END THE MILITARY OCCUPATION AND RENEW THE WAR AGAINST AL QAEDABy CHRISTOPHER PREBLE

CATO INSTITUTE

Copyright © 2004 Cato Institute
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-930865-64-8

Contents

Foreword.........................................................................................................ixExecutive Summary................................................................................................1Introduction.....................................................................................................51. A Long-Term Military Occupation of Iraq Is Not in the Best Interests of the United States.....................112. The Occupation of Iraq Is Counterproductive to Addressing The Terror Threat...................................193. A Long-Term Military Occupation Is Burdensome, Risky, and Ultimately Unsustainable............................354. A Democratic Middle East Is a Chimera.........................................................................455. How We Get Out................................................................................................53Conclusion.......................................................................................................69Notes............................................................................................................73Task Force Members...............................................................................................81

Chapter One

A Long-Term Military Occupation of Iraq Is Not in the Best Interests of the United States

The American military's swift victory over the Baathist regime in Iraq in April 2003 set the stage for a shift in U.S. military deployments in the region. The shift began with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's announcement on April 29, 2003, less than three weeks after the fall of Baghdad, that U.S. troops would be removed from Saudi Arabia, where they had been stationed since late 1990. "It is now a safer region because of the change of regime in Iraq," the secretary said. The withdrawal was implemented in short order, and all U.S. military personnel were out of the kingdom by the end of August. Drawing on the early lessons learned from the just-concluded war, Rumsfeld's announcement represented a significant change in U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, and it was entirely appropriate given the nature of the threats in the region. But that beneficial change will mean little if we merely replace a U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia with an equally provocative and draining long-term presence in Iraq.

Before the start of the war, many people in the U.S. foreign policy community argued against an extended occupation of Iraq, recognizing that such a presence would be resented both by the Iraqis themselves and in the wider Arab and Muslim world. As a candidate for the presidency, George Bush, concerned about the United States being seen as an arrogant nation, questioned America's right to "go around the world and say, 'This is the way it's got to be.'" And, yet, that is precisely the message conveyed by a U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Unfortunately, many political leaders and opinion makers, on both the left and the right, believe that the United States must "stay the course" and maintain the U.S. occupation for an extended period of time-although many of those people are vague about just how long that might be. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) asserted that "extremists" in Iraq could not force a "premature withdrawal of U.S. troops" and could not shake the U.S. commitment "to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society." Noting President Bush's similar pledge to "complete the mission," the editors of USA Today opined that the "tricky dance" for both men involved "devising a revised exit plan that doesn't bog down U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely or result in a premature pullout.... The challenge for Bush and Kerry is to head off pressure for an early pullout by finding a steady path for completing the job."

A vocal minority goes one step further, arguing that U.S. troops must remain in Iraq indefinitely. Tom Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute maintained that U.S. interests at stake in Iraq increased following Saddam Hussein's ouster. "The liberation of Iraq adds to the substantial list of U.S. interests in the region," wrote Donnelly in the Weekly Standard in May 2003, and he called for a "quasi-permanent American garrison in Iraq" to protect those interests. When Rumsfeld asserted that the Pentagon was not planning to keep permanent bases in Iraq, avowed imperialist Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations exclaimed, "If they're not, they should be." Indeed, Boot called on USA Today readers to "get used to U.S. troops being deployed [in Iraq] for years, possibly decades, to come."

Some people have used the rhetoric of democratization and political liberalization to justify a continued military occupation of Iraq. That sentiment flows from the belief that the creation of an Iraqi democracy is America's primary duty even after the fall of Saddam and the failure to find WMD. The general reasons for the support of Iraqi democracy are twofold: first, the humanitarian idea of democracy for democracy's sake and, second, the notion that democratic regimes tend not to threaten U.S. national security interests. According to AEI's Donnelly, the goal of the U.S. military presence in Iraq is "to secure a complete victory that will provide a foundation for Iraqi democracy." Richard Perle, former chair of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board, stated that, even after the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, the United States had a further obligation to liberate Iraqi society "from poverty, from corruption, and from the absence of a decent political life."

Many supporters of a long-term military occupation believe that the United States has moral responsibility "for preserving the liberal international order," so that the fruits of liberal democratic society can be known in parts of the world hitherto isolated from the progress of civilization. Iraq will be the political guinea pig for a new era of U.S.-led democratization and regime change. Two of the leading proponents of war with Iraq, the New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, contend that the existence of the first Arab democracy in Iraq will "demonstrate the compatibility of our ideals and interests" to critics abroad and make the world a "safer and better place." Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute went even further, proclaiming in an article in the Weekly Standard in December 2003, "The United States' standing in the Middle East and the world depends upon the transformation of American power into Iraqi democracy." However, supporters of that point of view have noted that there are other U.S. interests involved in democratization, interests that lie beyond a simply humanitarian ethos. In a Project for the New American Century "Statement on Post-War Iraq," the signatories argued that the democratization of Iraq was not only desirable on a humanitarian level, but that it was "an objective of overriding strategic importance to the United States." That was the point of view affirmed by President Bush in a nationally televised press conference in April 2004. "We're not going to leave. We're going to do the job," the president said. "A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East is vital to future peace and security."

That argument feeds into a broader critique, advanced since the events of September 11, 2001, in which support for a more pro-active U.S. defense policy is predicated on preempting the "forces that produce terror." Toward this end, the argument goes, the United States must remain in Iraq long enough to ensure that a pro-Western, multiethnic, liberal democratic government is elected and remains in power. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asserts that the creation of democracy in Iraq is a great cause that would transform the Middle East, similar to the defense of Western Europe from the Soviet Union after World War II. She declared that Americans, in concert with our allies, "must make a generational commitment to helping the people of the Middle East transform their region," because she admits that, "like the transformation of Europe, the transformation of the Middle East" will take "many years."

The assertion that a prolonged U.S. occupation will produce a robust Iraqi democracy, a model that will then be exportable around the Middle East, is dubious at best. However, even if it were possible to export democracy at gunpoint, such a strategy would entail a much greater commitment than simply overthrowing unfriendly dictators; it would also require the formulation, and subsequent stabilization, of democratic institutions. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it, "America broke Iraq; now America owns Iraq, and it owns the primary responsibility for normalizing it." Even many of those who questioned the legitimacy of the war have argued that the United States now has a responsibility to remain in Iraq for an extended period of time. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who voted against the Iraq war resolution, now says that the United States "must succeed in Iraq for our sake as well as that of the people of Iraq and their neighbors." Sen. Edward Kennedy (DMA) agrees. "It is essential to our national security," he declared in a recent statement, "to create a stable government in Iraq and prevent it from becoming a breeding ground for terrorists."

The concern that Iraq could descend into chaos and become a "breeding ground for terrorists" was present well before the war, even among the most enthusiastic advocates of military action against Iraq. For example, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith wondered aloud how the United States could establish a foundation "for the kind of ... broad-based, representative government building on democratic institutions and the like. A government that will be humane to its own people and not a threat to its neighbors, not have WMD, [and] not support terrorism."

Although Feith asserted that the U.S. objective was to "get the Iraqis running their own affairs as soon as possible" and that the United States is "not looking to occupy the country," the project that the United States is undertaking is unmistakably long term. Donnelly points out that, even taking an optimistic view of Iraq's potential for creating a pluralistic political order and the rule of law, "there will still be a desire to protect the nascent Iraqi democracy in a nasty neighborhood." That implies the need for a U.S. military presence in Iraq for not only the time it takes to create democratic, pluralist, political structures and liberal economic structures where they have not existed hitherto but also subsequent to their formation so as to ensure their stability and health. The difficulty was captured by an unnamed administration official quoted in the New York Times: "We're boxed in. We have a highly difficult set of issues to deal with here. We can't settle for just anything that gets us out of Iraq.... If we turn things over [on July 1, 2004] to whatever slapdash conglomeration that is out there ... you could have a civil war in Iraq come next November." Accordingly, Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria calls for "candor about the costs of the occupation and our determination to stay," arguing that that "will send a signal to the world and, most important, to the Iraqi people that they will have a predictable, stable future."

The president embraces the view that the war in Iraq is tied to the war against Al Qaeda by the broader goal of planting democracy in Iraq. President Bush delivered four major speeches in 2003 pledging to establish a democratic system in Iraq as the first step toward promoting liberal democracy in the entire Middle East. "Iraqi democracy will succeed-and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran-that freedom can be the future of every nation," Bush stated in a speech delivered to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, on November 6, 2003. "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," he predicted, stressing that the United States was not only preaching democracy in Iraq but also trying to build there a model for other Arab nations to follow.

Although most Americans supported the war in Iraq out of concern that Iraq posed a threat to the United States (indeed, a poll taken in August 2003 found that 7 of 10 Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the September 11 attacks), the Bush administration's broader goal of using regime change in Iraq as a vehicle for forcibly democratizing the entire Middle East was always there, under the surface. Bush had mentioned the spread of democracy in the Middle East as a justification for the invasion of Iraq in a speech before the American Enterprise Institute on the eve of the war in February 2003.

Indeed, the enthusiasm with which President Bush has embraced "nation building" in Iraq, and the wider goal of promoting democracy throughout the Arab world, has intrigued those observers who recall that during the 2000 presidential campaign former Texas governor Bush stressed his commitment to a Realpolitik approach in advancing U.S. interests abroad and rejected the Wilsonian agenda of humanitarian military intervention championed by his predecessor Bill Clinton in the Balkans, Haiti, and Somalia.

And yet, less than three years later, President George Bush had embarked on one of the most ambitious nation-building schemes in American history. Regardless of the original justifications for going to war, all indications are that the Bush administration expects to be in Iraq for a very, very long time. In January 2004 it was reported that the Pentagon was considering the appointment of a new four-star general to be stationed in Baghdad. That individual would be expected to operate independent of Central Command (CENTCOM), the current regional Commander-in-Chief (CINC). The creation of a new Middle East Command in Baghdad, complete with the support staff commensurate with a four-star CINC command, also reflects the Pentagon's belief that the military situation in Iraq and the wider Middle East-Near East region is far from settled. Although the Pentagon did not confirm the reports, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers conceded that it was "probably not unreasonable" to expect that troops would be in Iraq for decades. Combine that military posture with the statements and actions of the State Department and other U.S. government agencies concerning the size and scope of the American diplomatic presence in Iraq. The United States is planning to create one of the largest U.S. diplomatic missions in the world in Baghdad, with a staff of more than 1,000. All of those signs point to one conclusion: the United States intends to continue calling many (if not most) of the shots in Iraq long after the handover of political sovereignty.

None of the arguments for a continued military occupation is compelling. A long-term military presence in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States.

First of all, the continuing occupation of Iraq is counterproductive. It diverts attention and resources from the greatest threat facing the United States today: Al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist organizations that wish to kill Americans. For the past year and a half, Iraq has monopolized America's attention. Everyone, from the military, the intelligence community, and the foreign policy apparatus, to the news media, the Washington think tanks, and of course the public itself, has been riveted by the spectacle of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is hardly surprising that too little attention has been paid to a number of tangible and far-reaching national security threats that have been festering during this period. Even more ominous, the U.S. military presence in Iraq has emboldened anti-American terrorists, serving as a vehicle for recruiting a whole new class of disgruntled men and women anxious to inflict harm on the United States.

Second, a permanent military garrison in Iraq is not needed to protect vital U.S. interests, and the maintenance of such a troop presence will impose enormous costs and create a host of new headaches for the American taxpayers and the military alike. Those who favor maintaining a military presence in Iraq largely ignore the costs and risks associated with such a strategy. And yet, even conservative estimates of costs extend into the hundreds of billions of dollars. During a radio interview in June 2003, Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor at the New Republic, dismissed concerns about costs out of hand. Still, when pressed on specifics, Kaplan did not dispute that the occupation of Iraq alone would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. "I think that's a fair estimate," he said, but, he continued, "I don't think the most appropriate way of looking at this situation is through green eyeshades."

It's true that the costs to our military can't be quantified by green-eyeshade-wearing accountants. The intangibles include the possibility that frequent exposure to risky and unappealing tours of duty in Iraq will drive down reenlistment rates and undermine recruitment for the all-volunteer force. Meanwhile, the costs of lives lost, and hundreds more forever disrupted by disabling injuries, are incalculable. From the beginning of operations in March 2003 to the end of April 2004, 764 men and women were killed and more than 3,800 injured in Iraq.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from EXITING IRAQby CHRISTOPHER PREBLE Copyright © 2004 by Cato Institute. Excerpted by permission.
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