Some Wise Words on Iraq

First, I start with this quote from Jonah Goldberg:

"Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home."

Read this post at The Corner to see how using that quote has caused one Usenet member some problems.

Over at HughHewitt.com, Hugh interviewed the NY Times writer John Burns who is in Baghdad as we speak and is seeing definite progress with the surge (two other Times writers had the same epiphany as noted here). Burns has this to say about the effect the antiwar/pull out now crowd is having on the possibility of averting a civil war:

HH: One of the arguments for those favoring a timeline for withdrawal that’s written in stone is that it will oblige the Iraqi political class to get serious about such things as the oil revenue division. Do you believe that’s an accurate argument?

JB: Well, you would think it would be so, wouldn’t you, that the threat of withdrawal of American troops, and the risk of a slide into catastrophic levels of violence, much higher than we’ve already seen, would impel the Iraqi leadership to move forward. But there’s a conundrum here. There’s a paradox. That’s to say the more that the Democrats in the Congress lead the push for an early withdrawal, the more Iraqi political leaders, particularly the Shiite political leaders, but the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or reluctant, at present, to make major concessions. They’re much more inclined to kind of hunker down. So in effect, the threats from Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going, there’s absolutely no…and we’re going to have to settle this by a civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now?

Burns suggests that such a civil war could easily result in the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis (see quote at the top of post for some more context). The entire two hour interview is here.