When The Us Leaves Iraq

I base this on the behavior of presidential candidate John Kerry during the 2004 election campaign. Time and time again he would rail at the Bush administration for not doing something—like ramping up training of Iraqi security forces—and then it would turn out six months later that the Bush administration was doing it, but just hadn’t splashed it all over the media.

It was as though Kerry knew what the Bush administration was going to do next week, and used the knowledge to accuse the Bushies of not doing it this week.

All this year the Democrats are pushing troop withdrawal resolutions in Congress. Why would they bother except to whip up their netroot base? In September, after Gen. Petraeus reports, the Bush administration will either announce that the surge has been a success, in which case it will start to draw down troops, or it will admit it not quite a success—and start to draw down troops.

Democrats are doing what Kerry did in 2004, demanding that Bush do what he is going to do anyway.

But we center-right people are better than that. We are people with serious responsibilities and a serious strategic outlook. We should start thinking about what comes next. To help us Austin Bay has set forth the seven likely scenarios in Iraq after the US leaves. As he points out, he’s not the only one thinking about contingencies.

Business and government make plans. Every plan anticipates a future outcome. Since the future can’t be predicted, the best plans acknowledge uncertainty. Acknowledging uncertainty means accepting risk — the risk of being wrong.

So here are the seven scenarios for Iraq post withdrawal. Go read the whole thing if you want the details.

Three new countries
Regional Shia-Sunni war
Turkey expands
Shia dictatorship
“Gang-up” of Shia and Kurds against the Sunni Arabs
Chaos
The Iraqi center holds

Doesn’t look too promising, does it?

My own feeling echoes that of the Asia TImes’ Spengler. He points out that proper nations “have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists.” They need people who show up on time and get along with the neighbors.

Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to sort out its own problems.

Sounds pretty shocking, doesn’t it? But we had two civil wars here in the US. And between them they pretty well took care of the rejectionists, first of all the Brit loyalists and secondly the Southern slaveholders. Since then, we have gone without civil war, which is nice. Everyone gets along with the neighbors except when liberals come along and heighten peoples’ group identity instead of their American identity.

But there are always some troublemakers.

In the Middle East the west has been keeping the safety valve screwed down for decades because we want access to the oil with no interruptions and no shenanigans while the natives fight it out to decide who gets the revenue from the oil.

But what about the people of the Middle East? What do they want?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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