US Troops In Iraq For Another Century?

So what if they are?

No one has any idea how long a US presence in Iraq may be either necessary or desired (by the Iraqis in particular.) When Republican John McCain made his seemingly off-the-cuff comment, he was not making a policy statement. Anyone with even a quarter of an intact neocortex should have known that.

Apparently the current presidential campaign has stupefied the Democratic establishment. And many in the mainstream media. From the shock and horror spewing forth from the left hemisphere of the political world one might think that McCain had espoused a policy of never-ending war with hectatombs every year for decades to come.

Get a grip!

Let's get a couple of areas straight.

The surge worked. The US is no longer running a real risk of losing in Iraq. We have met the minimal goal of not losing. Behind the now thinning shield of US combat forces, the Iraqi National Army as well as the Government of Iraq have developed capacities, improved services, and provided stability, which is not being shattered by the occasional spectacular vehicle or suicide bombing of a soft civilian target. (Such as today's VBIED attack near a market in a Shiite section of Baghdad.)

The success of the surge and the concomitant improvements of Iraqi institutions and structures are the reason we no longer hear the Democratic congress-wallahs making mighty moans and shrieks of dismay regarding unmet milestones as they were a year ago. If the provincial elections in Iraq come off without widespread violence or enervating corruption, it will be fair to assess that the US has achieved not only its minimal post-invasion goal of not losing, but that the future of Iraq is in Iraqi hands,

Hands that will not need holding.

The US forces will not be in country to either hold hands or "guide" development.

They will be there for the same reason US troops remained in Europe following World War II and Korea following the armistice of 1953. Before going to the reasons for the long lasting US presence in Europe, Japan and Korea, consider that our military has been in Europe and Japan for sixty-three years and in Korea for fifty-five years.

Sixty-three and fifty-five years. Best chunk of a century for the first and a good chunk of one for the second. (Golly, kind of makes it obvious why McCain popped out with the one hundred years figure, doesn't it?)

The reason the US maintained forces on the ground in these venues under various Status of Forces Agreements was simple and self-evident. Keep the peace. Not only through the high-profile deterrence of cross-border invasion directed against the Soviet Union and its clients.

Sure, the deterrent mission was the one that got all the attention. But, it wasn't the only peace keeping consequence of the US presence.

The presence of the outsiders (us) also provided a useful matrix for maintaining internal peace. More than a few European statesmen and politicians wanted the US to stay in Europe even as the crowds were chanting "Yankee, go home," as they feared a recrudescence of German militarism should the Yanks pack up and leave. In Japan quiet talks in private with political, academic and journalistic personalities indicated that the US presence was an important tool for maintaining domestic order during many of the past six decades.

The US presence in South Korea has been important not only for raising a cautionary flag in the face of the less than totally predictable North Korean dictatorship, it has also served as a completely unappreciated insurance policy for the thugs in Pyongyang. As long as the US were in the South, a Southern invasion of the North was unlikely in the extreme.

Also the US bases in South Korea have served to inhibit some of the more boisterous potentials in South Korean domestic politics. It's not that the Ugly Americans have done anything at all to directly influence the more extreme elements of the Korean political spectrum. They haven't.

It is enough that they are there. With an unknown capacity and motivation for intervention.

That may not be a nice, warm and fuzzy thought, but it is an element of reality wherever US forces are based in significant number--particularly after a war.

The current Iraqi-US negotiations over a Status of Forces Agreement will conclude satisfactorily. With the exception of the increasingly irrelevant Sadrists and the even more marginal Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading political parties in Iraq favor a continued US presence. There is no doubt but the Kurds not only favor it, but are damn near demanding, "Yankees! Stay Here!"

Assuming that neither the rump of neocon cretins through continued insistence on provisions which do or may appear to threaten the sensitive sense of national sovereignty in Iraq and that the Democrats-in-search-of-an-issue don't scuttle the SOFA, it will be signed. US troops will stay in Iraq.

At this point the loudest applause should come, not from Baghdad and not from Washington, but from Tehran. Iran has always feared a replay of the Iraq-Iran War. For Tehran and for the Iranian public it was a disaster that could have been much worse. The mullahocracy ought to appreciate that no country where the US has maintained troops has invaded its neighbor.

So, how long will the troops stay?

Beats me, sez the Geek. McCain might have been right--or not. It doesn't matter in the real world.

It only seems to matter in the less than half-real world of presidential campaigns.