GETTING OUT OF IRAQ

The two possible futures for the United States in Iraq are evident. The first is that the Iraqi elections, scheduled for Jan. 30, will be a big success, the creation of an Iraqi army and police force will proceed rapidly, the United States will turn over the security to the Iraqis and their country will head toward the Bush administration’s stated goal of

a freedom-loving democratic state that will serve as a model for reform throughout the Middle East.

The alternative possibility is that the insurgency will continue to grow in strength and sophistication, as this week’s attacks suggest it is, that the continuing American occupation will build further enmity and resistance among the Iraqi people instead of the hoped-for friendship and cooperation. In that case, U.S. involvement will settle into a quagmire and drag on indefinitely.

Either future is conceivable, of course. But hope for the first is far from promising. The threats that justified the U.S. invasion – Saddam Hussein’s suspected role in the 2001 terrorist attacks and his supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction – have all but evaporated. And the administration’s predictions that the war would be quick and cheap and that Iraqis would welcome us were wrong.

Two widely respected columnists have looked at the available choices and concluded that the United States should get out now. William Pfaff, in his column last summer in the International Herald Tribune and reprinted on these pages then, urged John Kerry, if he won the presidency, to take what he called “the DeGaulle option.” France’s Charles DeGaulle turned to power in 1958 in the midst of an Algerian uprising that defied French efforts at pacification, French settlers insisted and much of the French public at home insisted that Algeria remain French, chanting “Algerie Francais!” Risking mutiny and assassination, Gen. DeGaulle brought the French troops home and then negotiated Algeria’s independence.

Edward Luttwak, a senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote last August in The New York Times that the United States should consider abandonment of Iraq for the very reason that it would trigger unpredictable mayhem. He argued that a well-devised policy of disengagement could cause America’s various enemies in the region to stop harming American interests and possibly even serve them to some degree. For example, the Shiites would begin to cooperate with the occupation if they saw that the United States was going to stop trying to control their traditional suppressors, the Sunnis.

Similarly, says Mr. Luttwak, the prospect of American withdrawal would cause Iran to lose hope of Shiite rule in Iraq and halt its support of the insurgency. He foresees that imminent American disengagement would persuade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to organize an Arab occupying force to take over from the Americans.

As Mr. Luttwak contends, a strategy of disengagement would require “risk-taking statecraft of a high order,” but would be based on the fundamental reality that many other countries have more to lose from an American debacle in Iraq than does the United States itself.

Visionary? So is the present course. Such thinking is worth consideration.