WASHINGTON ø Concern is growing within the U.S. Congress and
defense community that Iraq could turn into a failed state that would
resemble Lebanon.
But Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress that the
administration has not drafted a cut-and-run policy in Iraq. He envisioned
the formation of a constitutionally-elected government by the end of 2005
accompanied by a significant U.S. military presence that could last years.
"I think it's [long-term U.S. military deployment] entirely possible,"
Wolfowitz said. "But what I think is also nearly certain is the more they
[Iraqi security forces] step up, and they will be doing so more and more
each month, the less and less we will have to do."
The concern has been that a premature U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq
would leave that country prey to Al Qaida, Saddam Hussein loyalists and a
range of ethnic militias, Middle East Newsline reported. The result could be at least three different zones
in Iraq, one controlled by Kurds, the other by Sunnis and the third by
Shi'ites.
The issue has been raised in congressional hearings and in strategic
forums. The scenario raised by some strategists is that the Bush
administration or its successor, intent on stemming American casualties,
would evacuate U.S. troops from Iraq amid the success by Islamic insurgents
to wreak havoc in the country.
"I'm deeply concerned about a precipitous withdrawal of troops, for
whatever reason, in the short term, if we don't achieve a political
end-state that is satisfactory to the American people," Rep. Ellen Tauscher,
a California Democrat, said in a hearing of the House Armed Services
Committee on June 22.
Wolfowitz acknowledged that the Defense Department and the U.S. military
were startled by the resilience of the insurgency in Iraq. He told the
committee that Pentagon planners had thought that the elimination of Saddam
Hussein's leading supporters would end any resistance to U.S. efforts to
stabilize and develop Iraq.
"If you want to say what might have been underestimated, I think there
was probably too great a willingness to believe that once we got the 55
people on the blacklist, the rest of those killers would stop fighting,"
Wolfowitz said.
Several leading members of the House and Senate have concluded that Iraq
has become the leading test for the United States in maintaining its
presence in the Middle East. They said Al Qaida, Saddam loyalists and their
supporters in Arab states share a goal to expel U.S. and coalition troops
from Iraq and turn that country into a hostile Islamic state.
"The connection between the Iraqi insurgency we are fighting today and
Al Qaida's worldwide campaign of anti-democratic terror is now clear," Sen.
Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, said. "Bin Laden's henchmen
are fighting side-by-side with Saddam loyalists on the streets of Baghdad,
Falujah, Najaf and across Iraq ø killing Americans and killing Iraqis,
striving to stop the onward march of Iraqi self-government, of democracy."
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, also
urged the United States to complete the effort to stabilize Iraq. O'Hanlon
warned that a premature U.S. withdrawal would turn Iraq into another
Lebanon.
The result, O'Hanlon said, would be ethnic warfare, an increase in Al
Qaida's presence and the disruption of oil exports. He urged the United
States to focus on Iraqi stability rather than democracy.
"It would make a mockery of our pledge to leave Iraq in a better
condition than when we went in," O'Hanlon ¹said. "If we had an Iraq that was
not committing genocide against its own people, ¹or invading its neighbors,
giving Al Qaida refuge or developing weapons of ¹mass destruction,
especially nuclear weapons, I could live with the outcome."