The Only Way Out of Iraq

On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, the Washington Post editors did an insightful take on the “Lessons of War.” This editorial was all the more conspicuous by the absence of the word “Islam” in any form throughout their analysis. This is a vital lesson that the Bush Administration and its neocon advisors have refused to learn during the four year occupation of Iraq. While the Administration might insist on Iraq being the “central front in the war on terror,” it really does not need to associate any of its brutal aspects with Islam. After all there are approximately 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, including about 5 million in the United States.

Having said that, any resolution to our involvement in Iraq will come from an answer to this key question that must be determined by polling the Iraqi people:

Are you Iraqi first and Muslim second, or are you Muslim first and Iraqi second?

If a majority of the Iraqis consider themselves Iraqi first, only then is it likely that President Bush’s current surge strategy will succeed. If a majority of the Iraqis consider themselves Muslim first, it is highly unlikely that any military solution – including the current surge strategy – is going to achieve the desired results. And, if this is indeed the case, the Bush Administration definitely needs to keep Islam out of the equation and pursue a purely political solution for Iraq.

The natural follow-up question to the “Muslim first” Iraqis would be:

Are you a Muslim first and Shia/Sunni second, or are you Shia/Sunni first and Muslim second?

However, this question seems redundant given that Iraqis have been involved, for over a year now, in a sectarian conflict – which is also a confirmation that they have pretty much put religion before country as well.

So if they are Shia/Sunni first, Muslim second and only then Iraqi, it would seem to me that we are inevitably headed for a modified but non-planned version of the Biden-Gelb plan – a violent trifurcation of Iraq without any central control.

Even if we did manage to bring a temporary peace to Baghdad and trained the Iraqi army for what it's worth, can we really teach the Iraqi people patriotism and love of country over religion, when they have clearly shown a preference for their different strains of Islam? This is the real lesson to be learned from not only the Iraq War, but also the larger war on terror – we have to get religion out of the equation because nobody is going to concede that they are the children of a lesser god. Hasn’t history repeatedly taught us that indelible lesson?

I would hope it has. The only way left to get religion out of the equation, even at this late stage, is by co-opting friendly Muslim nations with sizeable armies to join U.S. forces in bringing peace to Iraq. This strategy might seem like naïveté, but we do provide large economic and military assistance to allies like Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey. It is time President Bush leaned on them to provide military personnel to help us complete our mission in Iraq. It’s only after friendly Muslim armies join us in Iraq that the local population will quickly assert the primacy of its Iraqi character – thereby ensuring our mission in Iraq will succeed. As we start our fifth year of occupation, this now appears to be the only way out of Iraq!