Iraqis Should Decide Whether US Stays or Goes by Joshua Livingston, NYC

Much of the original opposition to the Iraq war was based on a rejection of Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war. Many still do not support the war in Iraq because they continue to view it as an unjust war, and so claim we should bring our troops home. However, the original opposition seems to me an insufficient reason to justify an American exit from Iraq. Rather, if an injustice has been done, then the offending party should, if possible, make restitution or otherwise be punished. This is the argument made by many of the supporters of the surge—that as the invading force we have a moral duty to the people of Iraq to help them develop a stable civil society and functioning government. This argument applies even if you think the invasion was unjust.

Thus, if you oppose the continued occupation of Iraq, you need to rely on different arguments. For instance, you could plausibly claim that the best way to achieve stability in Iraq is for the U.S. occupation to end. Even if you admit that there will be an initial heightening of conflict, it might still be preferable in the long run for the Iraqi people to develop a government without interference from the U.S. In fact, it might be that the U.S. occupation is one of the impediments to achieving stability. Thus, if the just response by the U.S. is to help restore Iraq to some level of stability, and this is best achieved by our departure, then even if this leads to an increase of terrorism in the U.S. or threatens our access to oil in the Middle East, we should do so.

But let’s say we grant that the most effective way for Iraq to achieve stability and a functioning government is for us to continue our occupation while working towards freedom for Iraq. That still doesn’t mean that we should in fact continue the occupation. After all, the success of this way is contingent not just on our continued occupation of Iraq, but also on that occupation actually working towards Iraqi freedom. And we can’t guarantee that just because we have good intentions and so support the occupation for the right reasons that others, those who are actually in charge of the occupation, will also have those motivations. Thus, even if there is a potential for success, a continued occupation is a riskier proposition for the U.S. as it gives us greater opportunity to continue to act unjust. Since there is no strong oversight body to enforce just behavior between the U.S. and Iraq, it might be best for the U.S. to leave Iraq even if it is not the best possible way to help the Iraqi people.

In part, this is the question of whether the U.S. can be trusted to run the occupation of Iraq. From the perspective of a policy-maker the answer might seem obviously, yes. After all, she can argue that what she is proposing is not just an occupation of Iraq, but a moral occupation—one working towards restitution. Thus, if we do continue the occupation and it ends up being run by incompetents or self-interested people (or even people working towards the U.S.’s ends rather than Iraq’s), then she can simply claim that we didn’t follow her proposal (because we didn’t occupy correctly). In fact, this has been the defense of many of the original supporters of the war in Iraq. They’ve claimed that they supported the war for good reasons, but that it ended up being run in ways different than they expected, and so, even though the war ended poorly, their original proposals were still correct.

The problem with this argument is that any policy proposal has to recognize that it will be carried out by a government of many actors with varying motivations, and so you cannot always trust that they will in fact act in ways your policy proposal says they should. Thus, proposing a policy that relies on all its supporters having similar motivations increases the risk that it will fail—thus making it a worse proposal. This problem is compounded by the fact that it is the U.S. itself that decides whether or not it should be trusted to carry out the occupation. But it is all of a piece—if the U.S. can’t be trusted to do a good job of helping Iraq, we also can’t trust the U.S. to decide whether it should be trusted to occupy Iraq. It would seem then that some outside body should decide whether the U.S. should maintain its occupation of Iraq—and the most obvious candidate to make this decision would be the Iraqi people.