How Should the United States Withdraw From Iraq? | Introduction
The question of whether the United States military should withdraw from Iraq is really a question of when and how. Very few people want to see a perpetual occupation of that country. However, the presence of American military forces in Iraq has proven to be a divisive and controversial issue. Each stage of the conflict, from the question of whether the war was even necessary to how it was conducted, has been subject to fierce debate. Contributing to the debate is the instability of the situation in Iraq, which seems to grow more chaotic the longer the occupation goes on. Decisions about when and how to withdraw from Iraq are sure to invite as much debate as the decision to go to war with Iraq in the first place.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, the United States began to focus on the regime of Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, which was thought to possess weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions. Hussein had been compelled to destroy his stocks of biological and chemical weapons after suffering a defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, but he had never fully cooperated with weapons inspectors from the United Nations. After September 11, the United States became concerned that Hussein, working alone or in concert with a terrorist organization such as al Qaeda, might use such weapons in another attack on America.
Although weapons inspectors from the United Nations were allowed to search Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003, Hussein’s regime seemed reluctant to cooperate with them. For example, after claiming they no longer possessed any weapons banned by the 1991 cease-fire agreement, Hussein’s government begrudgingly pointed inspectors to a small supply of medium-range missiles buried in the desert. Claiming that Iraq had been allowed to circumvent international law long enough, U.S. president George W. Bush appealed to the UN Security Council for authorization to attack Iraq. The council, however, did not approve a resolution explicitly authorizing the United States to use military force against Iraq if Hussein did not comply with weapons inspectors.
Despite this setback, President Bush swore to attack Iraq with or without the consent of the United Nations. “I have said that if Saddam Hussein does not disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. And I mean it,” he told reporters on February 7, 2003. The populace of the United States, meanwhile, was deeply divided on whether a unilateral invasion of Iraq was the proper course of action.
Despite the protests and lack of consensus in the international community, on March 19, 2003, the United States and it allies (primarily Great Britain, Poland, and Spain) launched a massive military assault against Iraq, aimed at toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. In an address to the nation, Bush alluded once again to the threat Iraq’s weapons posed, stating,
The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.
A military victory over Hussein’s government was swiftly achieved, with the U.S. Army capturing the capital city of Baghdad by April 9, 2003. President Bush signaled an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003, aboard the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The president struck an optimistic tone in his speech, remarking, “The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.”
While most people recognized that Saddam Hussein had been a brutal dictator, they remained troubled by the use of unilateral force by the United States. This concern grew when no chemical or biological weapons were found in the months following the U.S. victory. The United Nations’ chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, complained to CBS News that his team needed more time to thoroughly search Iraq before the war. “I think we were given a bit too short a time. A few more months would have been useful.” Blix later said that the Bush administration overinflated intelligence reports it received regarding Iraq’s weapons programs. He said, “I think that they were inclined to put exclamation marks where they should have a question mark.” America’s own weapons inspector, David Kay, concurred with Blix, stating that no weapons of mass destruction had been produced since the end of the Gulf War, despite some modest efforts to do so by Hussein. “I’m personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction. We don’t find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on,” Kay said in January 2004. If there were no weapons to be found, critics of the Bush administration said, then the United States had fought the war for illegitimate reasons.
Also alarming to many was the rising tide of violence that hampered rebuilding efforts. Hussein loyalists and other insurgents began a reign of violence that steadily increased. As the occupation continued, Iraqis began to increasingly resent the U.S. presence on their soil. The August 2003 bombing of the UN office in Baghdad, along with the October 2003 destruction of the Red Cross’s headquarters in Baghdad by Iraqi insurgents magnified the danger still faced by U.S. troops and made many confront the question of whether America had adequately planned for the postwar period. Senator Ted Kennedy blasted the Bush adminstration, saying “The foundation of our post-war policy was built on a quicksand of false assumptions, and the result has been chaos for the Iraqi people, and continuing mortal danger for our troops.” The New York Times reported on a troubling rift between the army’s top officers and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:
In February [2003], the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, estimated that it could take several hundred thousand troops to pacify the country after Mr. Hussein was removed from power, an assessment that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed as grossly inflated. The Army chief, civilian Defense Department officials suggested, did not understand the Bush administration’s plan for Iraq and was illinformed.
As the conflict escalated, it appeared that Shinseki had been correct. America did not appear to have troops stationed in Iraq to keep the peace. Retired four-star general Wesley Clark, at the time running for president as a Democrat, also criticized the Bush administration’s postwar strategy. He argued that the lack of sufficient troops and a concrete plan for managing the post-war period suggested a deep ignorance on the part of the Bush administration:
They didn’t have a strategy for what to do after they knocked over the statute of Saddam Hussein. No strategy for success. Now, any serious student of warfare . . . understands that warfare is about—not about the clash of armies, it’s about the resulting political changes.
Experts discussed a number of strategies to deal with the chaos, from handing control of Iraq to the United Nations to immediate withdrawal without resolution. Eventually, a multistage plan was developed in November 2003, calling for an interim Iraqi constitution to be developed by March 2004. That document would provide the foundation for an interim Iraqi government that the United States could then grant sovereignty to by June 30, 2004. The drafting of the constitution by the Iraqi Governing Council, a body assembled by the United States, proved to be, like most everything else in Iraq, laborious and controversial. The demographic makeup of Iraq, with three major power blocks (Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds) that disliked and distrusted each other, made consensus difficult to attain. Shiite Muslims comprise approximately 60 percent of the population in Iraq, but they had long been repressed by Hussein’s Sunni government and were now beginning to attain power commensurate with their status as the majority. Naturally, Sunnis and Kurds feared that a Shiite majority would harm their own interests. The Sunnis in particular feared this, as they were not eager to give up the power they held under Saddam Hussein. The Kurds, meanwhile, had enjoyed relative autonomy in northern Iraq following the end of the 1991 Gulf War and were not completely enthusiastic about giving up that independence. Unless a government could be created that most Iraqis agreed on, the nation threatened to devolve into civil war. The Iraqi Governing Council finally ratified an interim constitution on March 8, 2004.
While President Bush hailed this as a positive step in Iraq’s progress, stating “This new framework will result in protecting the rights of all Iraqis, and will move the country toward a democratic future,” others were not so optimistic. Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies questioned the legitimacy of the document, and of any government established by the Governing Council:
The new Iraqi constitution lacks legitimacy. It was drafted under U.S. supervision by a body hand-chosen by the U.S. military occupation authorities, and subject to final approval by the U.S. proconsul, Paul Bremer. Its acceptance by the Iraqi population remains uncertain; its ability to actually set the terms for laws to govern the country during the interim period after June 30 remains unknown; its relevance to any truly independent government created after the interim period remains in doubt.
On June 28, 2004—two days earlier than had been announced—a new Iraqi interim government assumed full sovereignty of the nation. Authorities decided on a surprise early handover to thwart possible insurgent and terrorist attacks on the original June 30 date. Iraq’s interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, declared that the new government’s policies would be based on four interrelated objectives: the establishment of security, economic recovery, the development of an independent judicial system, and the advancement of democracy. Allawi also stated that Iraq would continue to need the support of the international community:
We are placing our trust in international commitments of reconstruction aid and debt forgiveness, as well as assistance with multinational military support until Iraq is ready and able to assume full responsibility for its own security. With these efforts, God willing, Iraq will take its rightful place among the free and prosperous nations of the world.
President Bush, furthermore, explained that the U.S. military “will stay as long as the stability of Iraq requires,” in response to questions about the continued presence of American troops in Iraq. These statements of Bush and Allawi reveal that the handover of sovereignty to Iraq brings no definite answer to the question of whether the U.S. military should withdraw from the nation. The authors in At Issue: How Should the United States Withdraw from Iraq? examine the central issues surrounding America’s presence in the struggling nation. Even though the interim government has taken over, debates over when and how the United States should withdraw will certainly continue to rage.
