The U.S. Must Stay In Iraq

Colin Powell once said about Iraq: "You break it you bought it." He meant, of course, that if we invaded and removed the Saddam government we would be incurring a responsibility to the Iraqi people. We have a moral obligation as a country to the Iraqi people.

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who oppressed his people brutally, including using WMD against them. Brutal oppression does often have the effect of imposing relative stability. Removing Saddam allowed ethnic rivalries to erupt into violence. Violence the U.S. initially did a poor job of controlling. Al Qaeda members and sympathizers began pouring over the Iraqi border, seeing an opportunity to wage war on American soldiers. They planted bombs and terrorized Iraqis and basically did their best to cause as much bloodshed as they could.

What the surge, combined with the new tactics of General Petraeus, has done is allowed ordinary Iraqis to feel safer in cooperating with our soldiers against Al Qaeda. Casualties among our soldiers are falling. Violence by the Sunni minority and Muqtada al-Sadr"s Shia fighters has been drastically reduced if not eliminated altogether. The violence that is still ongoing is mostly the result of Al Qaeda. Most Iraqis do not want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq altogether because they fear a return of sectarian violence. Progress toward an inclusive government is proceeding, slowly, but still proceeding.

We all want the violence to end. But the question to now is not whether these casualties could have been prevented if not for George Bush, but whether more Iraqis will die if we leave or if we remain?

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton claim that the Iraq War has made Al Qaeda hate us more. But will pulling out of Iraq make them love us? Remember they were at war with us before we invaded. If we leave America will lose credibility. Al Qaeda will take credit for driving us out of Iraq and use that as a recruiting tool. If the Iraqi government fails, the chaos will provide am opportunity for Al Qaeda to train and prosper.

But if we stay, continue to rout out Al Qaeda, and provide an opportunity for the Iraqi people to make political progress (remember it took the U.S. 13 years to go from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution), they might just make progress. A democratic Iraq is both Iran and Al Qaeda’s nightmare. A middle-eastern democracy that isn’t Israel would stand as model for the rest of the Middle East.

I mourn both our slain soldiers and the Iraqis that have died thus far. The cost in blood and treasure has been to high to give up now.