President Obama’s commitment to finally withdraw all troop activity by Dec. 31 of this year is drawing close, and, regardless of your stance on the war, the consequences for sticking around in Iraq need to be objectively discussed.
The arbiter in the decision making process of whether to keep any troops behind, for whatever reason, is the fledgling government of Iraq itself. The “de-Baathification" of Iraq, especially in light of the spontaneous democratic movements in countries around the Middle East, raises the question of whether forcibly invading and occupying a country is the most conducive thing for allowing a state to independently evolve itself.
It’s the kind of automatic cynicism that first requires a subconscious level of liberal optimism. If this were the formula for a spontaneous chemical reaction, (L) denoting the specifically liberal state of matter, as it were, it might read something like optimism(L)+reality=cynicism(L). Perhaps more than anything, such cynicism implies the latent hope that this vague, anticlimactic withdrawal is America’s opportunity to start showing faith in multilateral cooperation once again — the policy that once saved the world from self-destructive paranoia of out-dated conflict models. And to add another layer of liberal idealism, this could also be America’s chance to treat a Middle Eastern state with the kind of optimistic economic stewardship it showed towards Asian countries during the cold war — instead of with things like pessimistic paternalism (in the form of “tough love” carpet bombing and the imposing of pro-American dictators), messy rules of engagement that have achieved an amazing level of civilian casualties gone completely unaccounted for, and dare we forget, unwarranted invasion and occupation. These are simply not cultures we’ve had a history of giving the benefit of the doubt.
Even with a self-conscious identification tone in place, speculating about the new Iraqi state, and the small pool of any actual decision making precedence it may have, remains impractical. American interest remains the prime mover in the region, and American interest, as if the last large chunk of human history is any indication, is the practical starting point of conducive utilitarian argument for everyone involved.
A recent op-ed in The Washington Post by Meghan O’Sullivan, former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, claims that despite political emotions having a continued presence in Iraq, it will be a positive thing at the end of the day; America should “reap the benefits of it’s investment.” I will resist raging overlong on how deliciously damning it is to one’s humanitarian sensibilities to refer to a violently subdued, resource rich country as an “investment,” but O’Sullivan vaguely suggests we should keep a small active force over there to keep up the appearance of staying “committed” without high troop numbers — and also to somehow help arbitrate the distribution of oil to “help the global economy.” It’s our “responsibility.”
If America has a track record that merits us being responsible for anything positive on a global scale, it’s the dissemination of economic ideas and technology, which it can be argued are ultimately stabilizing contributions for everyone. The seemingly spontaneous zeitgeist of democracy and human rights sweeping the Middle East can be reasonably linked to communication technology, with a few specific examples of social network organization, both of which America has ultimately catalyzed. Educated people have embraced these tools and it has helped them start demanding real region changes, which is very exciting.
A new and incredible development in this debate is the method of miraculously extracting oil from subterranean rock via hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” This American technology has become so efficient that the global spread of energy production that has been making the U.S. feel all vulnerable and prone to sloppily invading weaker nations will rapidly center completely on North and South America. In 2008, we imported 2/3 of our oil. This year, we imported less than half.
The projections are in: In a few years we will have 2 trillion barrels of oil in reserve, more than half of what the entire Middle East maintains at a time. In five years we will have surpassed Russia as the world’s largest supplier of oil and gas, negating arguably the most important political leverage a country can have that isn’t a lot of nuclear warheads; and in 10 years, we will have exceeded the amount of oil even Saudi Arabia can pump, producing enough to exceed global demand. Aside from maintaining paternalistic delusions, the U.S. can now afford to leave Iraq and Afghanistan and own up to its neoimperialistic shenanigans. What we can’t afford to do is sit on our barrels of Carboniferous sludge and wait until other countries develop commercially viable alternatives.
— Wiley Robinson is a junior in ecology and evolutionary biology. He can be reached at rrobin23@utk.edu.
