Regardless of your opinion of whether we should have invaded Iraq or not in the search for Hussein under the assumption he had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to supply terrorists, there is one thing that everyone agrees upon…. our troops must come home. Many feel that there should be an immediate withdrawal of our troops completely and that we have no right to be in Iraq. Myself, I agree the troops need to come home but at the same point I know that if we did a massive withdrawal from Iraq immediately it could cause more problems than it would solve.
First, as everyone has probably heard by now there are too rival religious groups in the Sunni’s and the Shiites. Even while we are in Iraq now they are battling for control in government positions and roles in the new Iraq government. Unfortunately not all of them want to play by the rules and the insurgent groups have formed. Many feel if we withdraw complete the violence will end. Sorry, but I just don’t see that as a logical assumption.
These are religious groups that have hated each other for hundreds of years. The presence of the U.S. troops is a convenient excuse for them to give for their roadside bombings and attacks not only on the U.S. troops but on their own citizens. See there is the key, they aren’t just attacking our troops, they are attacking the average population, most often of the opposite religious group. The real battle in Iraq right now is no longer the U.S. against the Iraqi’s but it’s the Sunni’s against the Shiites, with the U.S. troops as convenient targets for both to try to create a smoke screen of the real purpose for their attacks.
As of now the Iraqi military and police force is not strong enough to control the situation. The other problem is you have members of both religious groups in those organizations and just putting them into the role of “police officers” does not mean they will give up their religious beliefs. We can not feel safe leaving the current police force in charge now until they are better trained.
If we left now we would be leaving a “weakened Iraq” which could be a target for it’s neighbors. Keep in mind Iran has a powerful army now and could see the weakened Iraq as a target to show their power. We also have to be concerned about countries like Syria, and rebellious groups like Hamas seeing potential opportunities in the weakened country.
The thing is we can not remain in Iraq forever. A year to two withdrawal plan would probably be a good idea. The key is though we need to do more than protecting and policing the country against the militant insurgent groups. We need to be spending more of our time on training their police and military forces for how to handle the situations the will undoubtedly face once we do withdraw and let them be the enforcers even while we are there. That way the people will see it is their own forces enforcing the peace and not a foreign invader which is how many feel there. Until their own security forces can regain the trust of the citizenship, unfortunately our brave soldiers must remain in Iraq.
