What type of disaster will follow our withdrawal from Iraq?

[MrModerate]

It seems obvious that the situation in Iraq can't be redeemed. The war was lost before it was begun because its basic premise -- remaking the Middle East in the US's image -- was both foolish and arrogant. On top of that, with the exception of a 3-week period of active combat when we proved that our multi-trillion dollar military could whup the tar out of any 3rd-rate regional power weakened by a decade of sanctions, the conduct of the war and its aftermath have been incompetent beyond all imagining.

So we'll be leaving Iraq, sooner or later. What will be the outcome?

[YOY]

1. Iran part 2 at the expense of the Sunnis and Kurds.

n/t

[stillcool]

2. it seems to me....global corporate interests...

will decide who withdraws from where...when and how...according to their needs.

[heidler1]

3. Impossible to tell. If the US insists on giving massive aid to Israel

at the expense of the Muslim M/E then the hatred they have for the US will grow and grow. They will try to retaliate and we will bomb them some more and call them evil or it is war without end. Will we face this stupidity, I doubt it?

[Jacobin]

4. It'll get worse before it gets better

eventually, a new strong man military dictator or ayatollah will emerge and order will be re-established.

No order will ever be re-established with 135,000 infidels occupying their land.

[LaPera]

5. You must be insane! We are never leaving Iraq!

We aren't building 14 new US military bases, the largest Fortress/Embassy in the world, We aren't building huge new super-sized air strips, keeping a stated 50 to 60 thousand permanently stationed troops (not to mention embassy personal)and all the American corporations doing business (and stealing) in Iraq if we planned on leaving...

They are just stringing us along, they have NO plans to leave Iraq at least not until every drop of oil is gone from the Iraqi oil fields, many, many years from now.

[MrModerate]

6. Planned-schmanned. Despite the delusions of Georgie . . .

and his toads, we will be pushed out or our people will be pulled out by someone else. Regardless of the power of corporate media and our secret bosses, the tide has turned and as emperors have always discovered to their sorrow, you can't hold back the tide (especially in the age of global warming).

[LaPera]

7. Until we are pushed to the brink by warming...OIL is the order of the day

Iraq is located in a very strategic area for the US (military complex) they must continue to occupy Iraq, to be able to attack, to steal oil in the coming years from the surrounding nations. The fascist corporates are imperialist, they believe if we are stronger (meaning our kids dying for their interest) it is their right, they should just be able to take the resources, from other countries, (oil or anything else of value)...

We are the modern day Huns, Barbarians...we steal people's resources and employ slave labor around the globe! We aren't leaving Iraq!

[MrModerate]

8. They may try. They will not succeed. n/t

[LaPera]

9. Well dude, they are doing it! Iran next? n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. The breakup is already occuring.

The Shia have the upper hand, and with the aid of Iran, will probably end up the more powerful of the 3 budding states.

I would imagine that the Sunni part will ally itself with Syria.

The Kurds are the wild card, opposed by both Iran and Turkey, they will probably seek protection from the West having no other states in the area that will support them.

The Americans will be players only if the Kurds turn to them as protectors. But, I think that is an unlikely prospect because by the time the breakup is complete the Americans will want only to save what it can in the region and the Kurds are the unwanted stepchildren.

In the worst scenario (for the PNAC geniuses who engineered this thing) Syria and Iran will unite against the common foe bringing with them the Arab "street" whose discontent with their own bosses is growing. Egypt, Jordan, and certainly Lebanon are in that tottering bunch.

But, hey, we did stop Saddam from using all those terrible WMD, got Al-Queda out of Iraq, and have introduced "democracy" into the region. If it wasn't for those durned "birth pangs" everything would be hunkey-dorey and all those folks would be shopping at WalMart and naming their kids Dubya and Condi.

[MrModerate]

11. Lest we forget: the north ("Kurdistan") has oil . . .

And has been semiindependent for a decade or more. The south ("Shiiastan") has oil and a strong mentor in Iran. Only the Sunni "heartland" (no shit, that's what the CPA called it) has no oil. Inconveniently, it also has Baghdad and its 7 million people which could complicate things. Maybe TWO semi-stable states, with the Sunnis as a despised underclass in Greater Shiiastan.