Thinking Ahead To An Iraq Without U.S. Troops

From Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings:

I fully expect that when we withdraw and things go to hell, people will blame the withdrawal and those who advocated it. That will happen, but it will be completely wrong. One reason is that, as I've said, I see no reason to think that our presence in Iraq does more than delay the moment when things fall apart. But the more important reason is that the real reason why things will go to hell is not our withdrawal, but the fact that we invaded in the first place. Specifically:

• Before we invaded, Iraq was not, and would not become, a sanctuary for al Qaeda. Now it is.
• Before we invaded, Iraq was not about to descend into civil war; it is now in the middle of one.
• Saddam was horrendous to his people, and I have never tried to minimize that fact, but I think that the life of an ordinary Iraqi now is plainly worse than it was under his regime.
• Before we invaded, there was no real prospect of a regional war: Saddam was effectively contained, but not so weak as to tempt his neighbors to invade. Now, a regional war is a serious possibility.
• Before we invaded, Saddam posed no significant threat to us. He had been disarmed and contained, and had we given the inspectors enough time to finish their work, we would have known that. Now the blowback from this war has reached the United Kingdom, and it is only thanks to the incompetence of the would-be terrorists that no one was killed. It will undoubtedly reach other countries as well, possibly including our own.
• Before we invaded, Iran was in a much weaker position than it is in today, and it was seeking negotiations with us. The invasion has undone decades of work trying to contain Iranian influence in the region.
• Moreover, the invasion has threatened the stability of a number of nearby countries, including allies like Jordan.
  
  We created all these problems -- along with others, like the immense damage to our moral standing caused by the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- when we invaded and then failed to act immediately to restore order and security for Iraq's citizens. We have been trying to fix them for years, without anything remotely resembling success. When we leave, those problems will probably get a lot worse. If we leave soon, they will get a lot worse soon; if we stick around to keep a lid on them, they will get a lot worse when we eventually give up.
  
  The timing of our withdrawal will determine when the Iraqi people will be plunged into a deeper hell than the one they are already in. But that that will happen is not the result of the withdrawal. It is the result of what we set in motion when we had the clever idea of invading a complicated country without either a good reason or a clear idea of what we were going to do once we got there.
  
  We sowed the wind. The Iraqi people are about to reap the whirlwind. We can delay this, at a terrible cost, but we cannot prevent it.