Withdrawing from Iraq and what we're likely to leave behind

Nir Rosen in his response to Barry Posen's 18-month withdrawal plan in the Jan/Feb Boston Review writes:

The United States should leave, as Barry Posen and many others now realize, but I am less sanguine than Posen about the likely results of an end to the American occupation. Much damage has been done. Iraq is a failed state. The three governments that have existed since Saddam was removed have been unable to impose themselves outside of the fortified military base they inhabit, the Green Zone, now renamed the International Zone. Iraqi society has suffered yet another blow, after having been destroyed by dictatorship, wars, poverty, and sanctions. The brutal presence of hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers, the redistribution of power they caused, and the ethnic and religious forces they released have further destroyed Iraqi society. Power was distributed not only from one group, the Sunnis, to others, the Kurds and Shia, but also to everybody, that is, to anybody with a gun. In the absence of any political or civil authority, religious and tribal leaders gained supreme power. In places where there was no religious or tribal authority, criminal gangs took over. Elsewhere, the lines between the three were difficult to distinguish. ...

Posen is correct that the American presence inflames the resistance, but more than that, it is the cause of the resistance. Many Sunnis would have welcomed regime change initially, but the United States has made the Sunnis its enemy. Posen is wrong to view the resistance, or the insurgents, as former Baathists or radical fundamentalists in league with foreigners. The Iraqi resistance fights to liberate Iraq and end the occupation. They are not interested in Salafi Islam, Crusaders, Jews, the caliphate, or any international jihad. There is no threat of a government run by al Qaeda or sympathetic to it taking over Iraq, or even parts of Iraq, once the Americans leave. It is only because of the current chaos and the need to throw fresh bodies at the Americans (and Saudis are more eager to die than Iraqis) that there are foreign fighters in Iraq now.

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