With the last American troops being pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, the consequences of President Obama’s decision will soon be apparent. As the New York Times reports on its front page this morning, there is every expectation the New Year will bring with it a surge of attacks from al-Qaeda. The absence of U.S. forces will embolden the terrorists as well as make the tribal forces that allied themselves with us as a result of the surge wonder whether it is time to switch sides again.
Military analysts such as our Max Boot have discussed this issue in detail. But the administration has proved impervious to such arguments and is following through on its vow to bug out of Iraq. While we should not entirely despair of the ability of the fledgling democracy that America has helped to install in Iraq to defend itself, the possibility now exists for Obama to have squandered all the hard-won gains those U.S. troops won since the surge turned the tide in that war. But the question we must ask is whether or not anyone here will care if Obama’s fecklessness snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. No matter what horrors await the Iraqis, Obama may be counting on the indifference of Americans to what happens there once the last American soldier leaves.
The problem facing Iraq’s democratic leaders hoping to maintain U.S. support for their efforts goes deeper than American disillusionment with the corruption and incompetence in Baghdad that is a staple of Western reporting from the country. The fact that the current government is clearly better than the Saddam Hussein dictatorship or what would follow an al-Qaeda victory doesn’t seem to worry most Americans. The equanimity with which the possibility of catastrophe in Iraq after the pullout is received here is due in large measure to the fact the narrative of the Iraq war in the minds of many, if not most, Americans seems frozen in 2006 at the height of the insurgency before the surge.
At that time, most Americans believed the war in Iraq was largely lost. That was an exaggeration, but it stuck, and even now it is not uncommon to hear people speak of the conflict as if the last five years had never happened. Despite the subsequent reversal of fortune that the surge accomplished, the notion of Iraq as an American victory and not a fiasco has yet to penetrate the popular imagination of our culture. So if the pullout allows the situation there to disintegrate, a lot of Americans are going to think it was inevitable anyway and not worry too much about it.
Nor can we expect most Americans to care very much about the fate of the people we leave behind. This was the tragedy of Vietnam. For most of us that war ended when the last helicopter took off from the embassy roof in Saigon. Few raised an eyebrow when the victorious communists took revenge on the allies we abandoned. The re-education camps and the deaths, even the boat people, went largely unnoticed in the United States. The only thing about that country that interested most Americans after 1975 was the possibility that some U.S. soldiers had been left behind, spawning a wave of conspiracy theories and popular entertainment based on that notion.
Iraqis should expect the same thing once the last American leaves their country. If the worst happens, conservatives will blame Obama, but liberals will say that the whole conflict was unnecessary and wrongly insist that it was all a matter of Bush lying. But the message to Iraqis is clear. Once we leave, you’re on your own.
For the United States to allow Iraq to go down the drain after all we’ve done there would be a tragedy. But it will also signal Afghans and anyone else that is paying attention that being a U.S. ally is a bad long-term investment. Though Americans may not care what happens to Iraqis after we leave, that’s a problem that will haunt us in the decades to come.
