If U.S. Leaves, Al-Qaeda Will Not Inherit Iraq

In making the case for an open-ended American military presence in Iraq, the Bush administration and its supporters have deployed various worst-case scenarios of what will occur in the event of a military withdrawal. The most important of these is the assertion that Iraq will become a terrorist haven if the United States leaves.

In a recent speech at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld painted a very grim picture. Rumsfeld asked his audience to "[i]magine the world our children would face if we allowed [Ayman] al-Zawahiri, [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi, [Osama] bin Laden, and others of their ilk to seize power or operate with impunity out of Iraq." According to the defense secretary, the answer is obvious: "They would turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was before 9/11 - a haven for terrorist recruitment and training and a launching pad for attacks against U.S. interests and our fellow citizens."

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad warned that a post-Saddam, post-U.S. Iraq would be even worse than Afghanistan. In an interview with Rich Lowry of The National Review, Khalilzad painted only two possible outcomes in Iraq. In the optimistic scenario, the U.S. achieves all of its political objectives, including the establishment of a functioning Iraqi democracy. Realistically, this requires an American presence for several more years. Khalilzad's alternative scenario, though, is too horrible to imagine: "Al-Qaeda taking over part of Iraq and from there expanding to the rest of Iraq or beyond the region and the world."

President George W. Bush also seems convinced that Al-Qaeda could take over if U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq. In a speech to U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen on November 30, he pointed to Al-Qaeda's stated objective to gain control of Iraq. Following an American military withdrawal, the president warned, "They would then use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks against America."

There is ample reason to doubt these claims. In a recent essay in The Boston Review, MIT's Barry Posen explained that the U.S. could not even be certain that a civil war, if one were to occur, would be a strategic boon for Al-Qaeda. More to the point, the U.S. does not need 150,000 troops in Iraq to pursue Al-Qaeda. The Zarqawi network is not going to be defeated by civil policing and neighborhood patrols.

Christopher Preble and Justin Logan