by Dr. Richard Oliver Colin

The United States' involvement in Iraq is the foremost political issue our nation faces at the present moment. It is a situation of enormous complexity, fraught with controversy and certain to have far-reaching consequences for America, the Middle East and the world. Professor Richard Oliver Collin—in addition to his achievements as an Oxford graduate, espionage novelist and award-winning educator—is Coastal Carolina University's Middle Eastern specialist. In the early 1970s, after serving two years at the Pentagon as a briefing officer for the Army's Chief of Staff of Intelligence, Collin lived and worked in the Middle East, where he witnessed civil wars in Lebanon and Oman. A primary focus of his academic research has been the study of the roots of political violence. Professor Collin's personal experience and scholarly expertise command attention for his views on terrorism, the Middle East and American policy. The following essay is his analysis of the current situation. Its viewpoints are personal and do not necessarily reflect either those of his colleagues on the CCU politics faculty or of the University.

Our soldiers in Iraq have been brave. With some honorable exceptions, our politicians have been cowardly. Belatedly, the scholarly community is now speaking uncomfortable truths about the Middle East.

In the months leading up to the war, there were area specialists in the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department who knew that the occupation of a major Arab country was madness, but chose not to endanger their careers by saying so out loud. When the Bush administration effectively fired General Eric Shinseki for disagreeing with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, everyone understood that dissent would have consequences. Faced with a voting public stunned by 9/11 and deluded by fables about weapons of mass destruction, most elected politicians humored their constituents with patriotic pieties, voted for the War Powers Resolution and kept their doubts—­if they had any—­to themselves.

After four years of coalition (i.e. U.S. and U.K.) causalities, violence in Iraq seems worse than ever, and the war—­always opposed by most Europeans—­has now become thoroughly unpopular in the United States. How are the politicians reacting to this new reality?

Mr. Bush and his mostly Republican allies demand that we "finish the job" to achieve some downsized version of victory. They warn that defeat would decimate American prestige abroad, make Iraq into a garden of exportable terrorism and perhaps even trigger regional warfare. Claiming that progress is actually being made, they want to "surge" more troops into the region to stabilize the situation long enough for the Iraqis to "step up" so that the United States can "stand down," leaving some minimally satisfactory regime behind.
For their part, Democrats and a growing number of disgruntled Republicans accuse the Bush administration of mismanagement, implying that a properly executed war might have been winnable. Acknowledging popular distress about rising casualties, they argue that we need to begin troop withdrawals this year. Even as we flee the battlefield, they believe that we can ordain benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet and force the fragmented Shiite establishment to reach out to its ancient enemies in the Sunni community. Crucial to a successful U.S. withdrawal, they argue, is a diplomatic deal of some sort with Iraq's neighbors, especially the Syrians and the Iranians, who are perceived as having some motive to rescue an American administration that has always been committed to their destruction.

With their rather separate scenarios, both political parties envision some form of modified happy ending in which stability and security can be brought to the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley.

In a confused and inchoate way, Americans have tended to support one ofthese two political options. Some find it difficult to concede that our troops have been massacred because of an error in judgment and demand that their sacrifice be validated by ultimate victory. Looking at the same casualty lists, others believe that we need to cut our losses, leave right now and let the Middle East go to hell.

When the war's opening shots were fired in 2003, a few scholars joined America's weak and fragmented opposition to the war, perhaps because only tenured academics could protest without fear of reprisal. We professors have a Faustian pact with civil society. In return for the right to think the unthinkable, we accept miserly salaries, minimal social status and the sullen realization that no one listens unless there is going to be a quiz.

While most Middle East academic specialists were privately horrified, however, there was only a limited amount of public pre-war dissent from the professoriat. In the post-9/11 furor, opposition to the war may have seemed unpatriotic. Universities reward professors for winning grants and writing articles in peer-reviewed journals, not for irritating the politicians upon whom we depend for financing. In our desire to connect with the communities we serve, universities may have grown uncomfortable with our historic mission of speaking truth to the powerful.

Nor was anyone particularly interested in our views. With the unhappy exception of Princeton's pro-war neo-con, Bernard Lewis, neither the media nor the government displayed much interest in the views of Middle Eastern specialists. This is understandable. Lacking a knack for the sound bite, professors do not make good television commentators. We are accustomed to lecturing uninterruptedly for an hour or more; on television, you get 90 seconds to explain the difference between Sunnis and Shiites before the network cuts to a commercial. Instead, the media consulted the usual think-tank talking heads, most of whom are self-appointed "national security" experts with little deep knowledge of Middle Eastern languages and religions and political passions.
After four years of war, Middle Eastern academic specialists are still generally shunned by government and media, but this scholarly community is now speaking with unaccustomed unity, clarity and vigor, albeit mostly in academic publications. And they are painting a portrait of the Middle East that is significantly at odds with the visions of both Republican and Democratic leaders.

What are the scholars saying? From the very beginning, virtually all students of the Middle East saw Iraq as an artificial and ethnically fragmented time bomb of a country. The loathsome Saddam was an inevitable bi-product of Iraqi society rather than its creator, the pin in this Mesopotamian hand grenade. With his skillful use of domestic terror, Saddam monopolized wealth and political power in the hands of a tiny and secularized Sunni minority, despite the fact that most Iraqis were neither secular nor Sunni. This kind of institutionalized armed robbery could only be accomplished by violence and fear. In March of 2003, we pulled the pin and threw it away; when we release the handle, the hand grenade will explode.

Most Middle Eastern academic specialists agree with the Democratic Party that U.S. military forces in Iraq, "surged" or not, will be unable to stabilize this turbulent and hostile land, much less deliver democracy. American public support for the war is plummeting so dramatically that withdrawal of U.S. forces at some point in the short or medium term is inevitable, whatever the consequences for the Middle East.

And what will be the consequences? The Iraq War is often compared to the Vietnamese experience, but Vietnam provided us with a unified, coherent and competent enemy to whom we could lose. Iraq is quite a different story and as we move into the endgame phase of our Iraqi adventure, students of the Middle East find themselves echoing some of the dire warnings of the Republican leadership.

American presence in Iraq is barely moderating a burgeoning ethnic conflict, but our departure will allow the explosion of a full-scale five-sided civil war involving Kurds, secular Shiites, Islamist Shiites, nationalist Sunnis and jihadist Sunnis influenced by al-Qaeda, a militia-driven conflict that most experts agree could last a decade or more. If we are looking for historical comparisons, it is worth noting that violent Sunni Arab resistance to Israel began in 1947, 60 years ago.
And the explosion is unlikely to stop at Iraq's borders. The Kurds of Northern Iraq will almost certainly fight to re-take the oil-rich land around Kirkuk that was stolen from them by the Arabs. A prosperous and functionally self-governing Kurdistan will be perceived in Ankara as a threat to internal Turkish stability, and Turkish troops are massing at the border, poised for armed intervention into the area around Mosul, where there is a significant Turkish-speaking minority.
Iran is emerging as the net winner, extending its already considerable influence over Iraq's Shiites. Reports from the southern city of Basra suggest that Iran already controls this Shiite stronghold through pro-Iranian militias over which the Baghdad government has minimal influence. For the past four years, Americans and Iraqi Shiites have together fought a mostly Sunni insurgency, but when the Americans go away, the angry Sunnis will still be there and the Shiites will need the help that only Teheran can provide.

In creating a Shiite-based and Iranian-influenced regime in Baghdad, we have managed to frighten the powerful Sunnis of the Middle East. Most oil-producing Persian Gulf states are led by Sunnis but contain politically marginalized Shiite minorities. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates would be very reluctant to see the complete defeat of the Iraqi Sunni community. Syria and Jordan would share this concern and many of the Arab states in the region would be tempted to intervene with 'volunteers' and financial assistance.

Complicating the equation is the possibility of a parallel war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This conflict could be triggered either on purpose, by a decision taken in Washington to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, or accidentally, by an armed encounter between some element of the Iranian navy and one of the several hundred U.S. Navy ships in the crowded Persian Gulf. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped a party of British service personnel in March 2007; had those captives been American sailors, the United States would have retaliated militarily.

While an actual U.S. ground invasion of Iran is probably off the table, Washington policymakers are assuming that Teheran will back down to avoid being bombed. This is an unwarranted assumption. Iranian experts have noted that this theocratic government is corrupt, inefficient and unpopular. A few American bombs would rally Iranians around the ayatollahs and rescue the regime from its own ineptitude. With American combat forces already stretched to the breaking point, some observers have contemplated the ease with which the Teheran Government could—­at a moment's notice—­march hundreds of thousands of troops into southern Iraq, threatening the small British force there and cutting off the escape route for American forces further north. It is hard to say whether or not the Iranians would or could interdict the Straits of Hormuz through which a significant percentage of the world's crude oil passes. It is clear, however, that any generalized conflict in the Persian Gulf would send energy prices soaring high enough to jeopardize global economic growth.
In a regional context, therefore, the departing Americans could leave behind something very much like a Middle Eastern World War Three. NATO's campaign in Afghanistan against a resurgent Taliban is going poorly, and neighboring Pakistan is on the brink of a civil war. The 2006 duel between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia has paralyzed politics in both Jerusalem and Beirut, while the Palestinians are in the opening stages of what could be a civil war of their own, pitting the secularist al-Fatah against the Islamist HAMAS. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are both shaky and corrupt dictatorships with powerful internal adversaries. The United States has assisted the Ethiopians in returning anarchy to Somalia, while the genocidal Sudanese-Darfur conflict continues to rage. While not all of the blame can be laid at his door, Mr. Bush could leave office in 2009 with generalized warfare raging from the Himalayas to North Africa.

Students of the region, therefore, perceive the emergence of an inescapable no-win situation. If American public opinion translates into pro-peace votes in the 2008 election, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress will withdraw the bulk of our troops, barring some unforeseeable event like another major al-Qaeda attack on U.S. territory. Even if a Republican manages to capture the White House, Congress will almost certainly be controlled by an enhanced majority of Democrats who will use legislative means to shut down the war. As the last U.S. combat units depart, Iraq will dissolve into chaos, perhaps accompanied by much of the Middle East.

It is difficult to say how much of this is understood by the political leaders of either party. They are not Middle Eastern scholars and do not seem to be talking to people who are. It does seem to most regional specialists, however, that American political leaders are positioning themselves to survive the domestic political consequences of the coming catastrophe, rather than dealing with the catastrophe itself. The Democrats are insisting upon a phased withdrawal that would begin in 2007, and this timing can hardly be accidental. If the departure of American troops sparks a Mesopotamian meltdown, Mr. Bush and his colleagues will still be in office, available to take the blame and suffer the electoral consequences of disaster when voters go to the polls in November 2008.

Despite the lack of measurable progress, Mr. Bush and his colleagues have promoted their "surge" under a popular new general, ruthlessly extending tours of duty for military personnel to increase the number of boots on the ground. While this is unlikely to change anything in the long run, it may be calculated to delay the inevitable through 2008, after which a new president and a new congress could go ahead with the inevitable troop withdrawals. Safely retired to his ranch in Crawford, Mr. Bush could then blame the catastrophe on the Democrats, arguing that a little more Texas courage would have saved the day. Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations was speaking for most political scientists when he wrote:

The Bush approach looks like an attempt on Bush's part simply to avoid defeat and pass the tar baby on to his successor, Democrat or Republican. The alternative looks like a way to have the United States escape from a quagmire, whatever the consequences. Either way, Americans and Iraqis lose.

If staying in Iraq amounts to the perpetuation of a slow catastrophe, and departure could bring on a quick catastrophe, what kind of minimal options do we have?

First, it would be both useful and healthy to acknowledge openly that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a grotesque mistake and perhaps even a crime, dishonestly sold to the public with a tissue of lies during our post-9/11 hysteria. The war was both illegal under international law and a strategic error of monumental proportions. The current crisis may have been exacerbated by Iraqi political failures, Iranian interference and epic mismanagement by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, but the war was never really winnable. We lost the day we thought we won.

Second, our political leaders need to let the public know that there is going to be no happy ending. Our endgame options are severely limited and it is the function of political parties to offer alternative public policy choices, not to recite fairy stories. A future President Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama might manage the catastrophe better than the hopeless George Bush, but the next president is not going to find any good options on the table. Our troops will come out soon because of the way our political system works. When we leave, a bad situation will become worse because of Iraq's political culture. We lack any real ability to change these facts on the ground and the phrase "culpability without capability" has been making the rounds of the academic community.

Third, the U.S. needs to devise ways of saving what little is salvageable fromthe situation in an orderly and coherent fashion. Arguments can be made for leaving a small residual military force in Kurdistan to help protect the one corner of Iraq where we are actually welcome. Once the Iraqis are clearly aware that we are departing on a fixed timetable, they may improve their performance, and if this improvement is significant, we may wish to leave a few troops behind to train and equip, but not to fight. If the Iraqi government collapses, we need to honor our responsibility to that large cadre of Iraqi government servants, translators and others who have played Sancho Panza to our Don Quixote. We should provide safe haven for these people, rather than deserting them as we did our South Vietnamese allies in 1975. This may involve a considerable number of Iraqis coming to the United States as immigrants. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that there are two million Iraqis already in exile, and just under two million internally displaced persons. Do we have a responsibility for these people? Or are they merely collateral damage?

And we need to get our troops and their equipment out safely. The great danger is that we will suffer some Iraqi version of the October 1993 "Mogadishu Moment" when the massacre of American troops led to the abrupt abandonment of the U.S position in Somalia. Some equivalent incident in Iraq might create an overwhelmingly powerful public demand for a precipitous withdrawal, complete with the American ambassador departing via helicopter from the roof of a besieged American embassy. And when they come home, our troops need to be treated decently. With a few unhappy exceptions, American servicemen in Iraq have performed well under impossible conditions. When they return, many of them will have financial, physical and psychological problems, and we will need to care for them appropriately.

And finally, as we abandon the military solution, we should shift to humanitarian operations, something we should have done at the very beginning. Data researched by Johns Hopkins University and published in January of 2006 by The Lancet suggested that Iraq is suffering from a public health emergency of biblical proportions. A widely reported Save the Children report of May 2007 establishes that the Under Five Mortality Rate has tripled from 50 Iraqi children per thousand in 1990 to 150 per thousand today, which amounts to about 122,000 very young Iraqis dying per year. Helping the Iraqi medical profession deal with this public health catastrophe would be much cheaper than surging more combat troops into Baghdad, and would win more hearts and minds than shooting people. There is a primal, universal truth about parents, Iraqi or American. Hurt my child and I hate you to the end of my days. Save my child and I cherish you forever.

Our endgame moves are far more limited than our political leaders would like us to believe, but we still have a few options, and we need to plan them carefully and quickly. The Mogadishu Moment could be only a minute away.