All you naysayers were spouting off the same nonsense when we pulled out of Vietnam.
I'm pretty sure America didn't fall to the Communists then, and we certainly aren't going to fall to a bunch of Islamic militants now.
I'm always amazed when I hear something like this. For the most part I attribute it to a lack of knowledge about the differences between those two situations.
Ask yourself this. What was in the strategic interest of the United States that caused us to think we could be affected by the fall of Vietnam to Communism? It's not like we had a whole lot of interest in their rice production. What were we afraid of losing?
The short answer is the reduced access to the mediterranean and greater access to the mediterranean by our enemies. Did that happen? Absolutely. Within months of the fall of Saigon the Soviet Union began taking over the seaports in Vietnam. We didn't feel the impact simply because we never got into a direct military conflict with the Soviet Union. Had a conflict occurred we would have been severely limited by the Soviet Navy from being able to enter the Indian Ocean. So, in essence, we did lose what we thought we would lose...which was our ability to respond effectively to certain areas of the world in force.
Now ask yourself this. What is in the strategic interest of the United States that causes us to think we could be affected by the fall of the government in Iraq? For this answer you need to know the geography and the cultural/historical elements involved in this dispute.
The Shia are located predominantly in the east, southeast of Iraq and share a common belief system with Iran. The vast majority of insurgents and weaponry is coming into Iraq along this elongated border. Not only does this area have MOST of the oil in the area, they also have the only seaport. Whether it becomes a training ground for terrorists is almost inconsequential compared to the problem of Iran taking hold of that area and using the oil as a leverage point for getting what they want. That leverage will only have a marginal effect initially on the US, but it will most certainly be effective against Russia and several other countries who can give us grief in the UN as voting members of the Security Council.
Clearly Iran has the most potent military in the area and by taking over that particular piece of property they have tremendous political and economic leverage over their neighbors including Saudi Arabia.
The only thing that keeps this from happening is the fact that the Shi'a in Iraq are Arab and the Shi'a in Iran are Persian. The Shi'a in Iraq are also the single largest population in Iraq and therefore, if they can stay in power and learn to work effectively with the Sunni and the Kurds in Iraq they can all control their own destiny. But they do not have the military power at this point to withstand a confrontation with Iran.
So let's take the lessons learned from Vietnam and apply them.
We leave prematurely. Iran invades Iraq. How do we go back there to correct that situation? Do you think the Saudi's would allow us to stage from Saudi Arabia knowing full well that puts them at odds with Iran? And why would they do that knowing that our military is subject to being pulled out based on political pressures?
Moreover, look at the Sunni population which is located in the one region of Iraq that has no oil. They share both cultural and religious ties with Syria and Lebanon. I'm sure they will turn out to be great friends to the US once we leave and they lose all access to oil revenue and have no alternative but to integrate with Syria and Lebanon in order to survive.
The Kurds in the north have oil, but they will clearly align with Turkey (who are clearly not friends to the US) as that is where they have cultural and religious ties.
That pretty much wraps up the picture. We leave prior to Iraq being able to sustain itself we will end up with the whole of the middle east as enemies with the exception of (maybe) Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (like either of them are any help).
The answer here is not a simple situation of Communism taking over the world. Yes, we can walk away and let that all happen and hope it doesn't bite us. Or we can try to establish Iraq as a country that can stand up to these pressures and keep the middle east from boiling over and placing non-US friendly nations in charge of 80% of the oil production in the middle east.
