A coming horror?

With the talk of withdrawal from Iraq increasingly gaining credence, many people are forecasting a very difficult and dangerous state of life in that country afterwards. Some excerpts from an interview James Fallows had with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Nov 24, 2005.

TONY JONES: So what does that mean if, for example, a large number of American troops were to withdraw tomorrow? What would happen? JAMES FALLOWS: Well, if the US were to withdraw tomorrow, essentially there'd be no security force in Iraq. Now, the American commanders will point out to you, and will be right, when they say that things have been getting better in the last six to eight months. There are new training techniques, Iraqis are not defecting in the same way they did a year ago. The problem is the confrontation. The insurgency they need to deal with has been getting worse and getting worse faster than they have been getting better. So the gap is increasing.
TONY JONES: It's an incredible story, though, because you would think, given the evident importance of developing the military and the police force, that enormous resources and critical resources would have been put into that effort, and yet that seems not to have happened right from the beginning? JAMES FALLOWS: Well, you would think that. And I think right in the beginning there was a problem because there were these expectations from the Administration that everything would be easy. So, that was for the first couple of months. They just were just not prepared. Then for a next couple of months, there was something which, in retrospect, looks very damaging, which is the hunt for Saddam Hussein himself, or for his WMD, which meant breaking indoors, rounding up people, sending them to prison and interrogating them, which put up ill-will in Iraq which helped fuel the insurgency. And, then, by the time the insurgency was under way and the US started to notice this, it took a while to get going. And it's only been in the last six or eight months there's been serious attention from the US side.
TONY JONES: Now, do you get the sense - looking at this big picture - do you get the sense that, in fact, the seriousness of the training effort has, in fact, started too late? JAMES FALLOWS: Certainly way later than it should have and whether it's too late is still to be determined. But I think what you can say now about almost everything in Iraq is while the future outcome is not perfectly knowable, the trends, at this moment, are not positive. TONY JONES: Well, what does this mean in terms of getting out - as the Americans like to say - of Iraq, "with honour"? How can it be done? JAMES FALLOWS: Let me say that in my entire political and journalistic life this is the hardest question I've come across, because I think there are no acceptable answers. The United States simply cannot stay there indefinitely. Partly because whoever follows George Bush will be elected on an out-of-Iraq platform. That just seems to be a certainty. And if it will take years and years to train an Iraqi force, it seems unlikely the US can make that kind of commitment. On the other hand, we can't just leave. I mean, the United States took over this country, it would be leaving behind ethnic warfare. So, unless there is some sudden change of trend that means the Iraqis are able to contain things, we have two unacceptable alternatives.
Posted on The Human Stain