The day may well come when a newly-sovereign Iraqi government will order us out. Or they will adopt the cruel garb of theocracy. Or they will succumb to civil war. Or they will control Baghdad as Karzai controls Kabul. Or they will resort to Ba'athist-style secular repression as a means of holding the country together. And what then? Will it all have been worth it then? Will we look back and wish we'd grasped the nettle firmly as honor and common sense demanded back in the hard fall days of 2003?To which I say:
Whether you are teaching school or raising kids or running a drug rehab center or reconstructing a country or whatever - at some point you have to let go. You only have so much control. Iraqis may do any or all of these things - it will be their decision. All we can do is help get them on their feet, guide them, give them tools, teach them how to use them, and at some point it simply isn't in our hands anymore. (And, as Glenn says, Iraq doesn't have to be perfect. It is good enough if it can sustain conditions significantly better than under Saddam)
And then - like all the other callings I mentioned - we will agonize over whether we could have done a better job. And others will criticize our handling of the job. And they may be right. But just because we "grasped the nettle firmly as honor and common sense demanded back in the hard fall days of 2003" doesn't guarantee that the Iraqis will become whatever we hope. That doesn't mean we didn't "grasp the nettle" - it just means that they have free will.
This is similar to the fantasy of control I see on the Left, in the assumption that our failure to get an approval for war from the UN is due to diplomatic bungling on our part. As though France, Germany and Russia don't have their own global agendas. It's similar to the self-doubt of a jilted girlfriend: "If I had been blonder, bustier, more acquiescent, more charming . . . he would have stayed." Well, maybe, but you can't run your life that way. We should certainly engage in frequent self-examination, but at some point it's out of our hands. People are going to do what they're going to do.
As a counterweight to the pessimism on Tac's thread, read through this discussion. Follow the links. We are not leaving Iraq. We are helping them set up a constitution. Maybe it's too soon, but sometimes people don't rise to the occasion until responsibility is placed in their laps. More here.
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