The Obvious Consequences of an American Retreat From Iraq?

“Some day this war’s gonna end.”-Col Kilgore, Apocalypse Now

What do people think will happen if the US retreats from Iraq?

Do people really believe that if we call a retreat a “strategic redeployment” that 5 billion people on the globe will be easily mislead into believing that a retreat is not a retreat?

Does anyone really believe that the insurgency and sectarian violence there will weaken, dissolve, disappear, and a utopian, shiny happy people-place will follow (as the pre-invasion footage of Iraq in Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 911 illustrated)?

Does anyone really believe that the Iraqis will not seek vengeance upon the United States after suffering (2) US invasions, (7) American bombing campaigns, (12) years of sanctions/blockade that lead to the starvation of millions, and of course the 12,000-660,000 Iraqis who are estimated to have died in the occupation?  And were there to be Iraqi terrorist attacks on Akron, Ohio do we deserve it (ie, does my 2 year old little boy deserve to die in a vengeful Iraqi terrorist attack, and should I not seek vengeance instead of acceptance if that occurs)?

Does anyone think that the four initial and primary instigators in the Iraq insurgency (Saddam remnants in Syria, Al Queda, Iran, and the Syrian government) will all just cease their support, training, equipping, and funding of insurgency operations, or will their efforts increase?

If the insurgency and sectarian violence continues-as expected-in the wake of a fleeing American fleet packed with escaping American soldiers, then will that violence stay contained in Iraq even without a border patrol, a fence, or even a good marking on a map, or will the insurgency spread to neighboring countries evoking a regional war?

“After a little resistance [in Somalia], The American troops left after achieving nothing. They left after claiming that they were the largest power on earth. They left after some resistance from powerless, poor, unarmed people whose only weapon is the belief in Allah The Almighty, and who do not fear the fabricated American media lies. We learned from those who fought there, that they were surprised to see the low spiritual morale of the American fighters in comparison with the experience they had with the Russian fighters. The Americans ran away from those fighters who fought and killed them, while the latter were still there. If the U.S. still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia, then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return. “
-Osama Bin Laden Interview with Peter Arnett Late March 1997

To be clear:

America fought against an insurgency in Vietnam, was never defeated on the battlefield, but the war was unpopular at home, and so the American people demanded that their politicians cease funding the war, call it “peace with honor,” and retreated without being defeated in the field.

America fought against a Jihadi insurgency/civil war in Lebanon in the 1980’s.  There were American casualties, and the American people demanded that the US troops retreat from the field of battle.

America tried to save lived in Somalia, turned over command of operations to the UN, then encountered an Al Queda-trained, Jihadi insurgency.  American troops were ambushed one day, and despite losing dozens of their own while killing as many as 10,000 of their attackers, the American people demanded their politicians order a retreat from the battlefield.

In Iraq, America defeated a conventional army, but when faced with a Jihadi insurgency and subsequent civil war, the American people lost faith in their troops’ ability to succeed, and so Americans compel their politicians to order American troops to retreat from the field despite never having lost a battle to the enemy.

If this last example of American Engage-and-Retreat military action actually occurs, what strategy would an intelligent future enemy of the United States choose, and what iota of evidence suggests that aiming to force US troops to retreat by destroying America’s inherently weak resolve for war can one point to as an example of why such post-Korea strategies might fail?  Lacking such examples or spun reasoning, doesn’t it seem likely that if America lost Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, and Iraq not because the military forces were defeated but because the American people felt defeated, then every future enemy of the US will try the same tactics that succeeded in defeating the US in the past?

If a football team does nothing but pass, and loses every game in which it tries to run the ball, doesn’t it seem logical that future opponents will always try to force the run so that they might win as others had in the past?   Our enemies learn from our defeats.  After Operation Desert Storm, America’s enemies haven’t even ordered their air forces to take off and try to fight the USAF.  They know they will be defeated.  However, they all seek to use the media, pandering politicians, and sympathetic Americans with no resolve for war as their own targets and means to the ends of their success: the enemy’s success.

Planet Earth is not a civilized planet.  There are varying degrees of civilization, but by and large it is not civilized, not fair, and the rules of law (or even justice) simply do not prevail.  Too often there are human beings who-through either birth defect or personal experience just lose their sense of being, and they become human only in animal form.  Dhamer, Manson, Stalin, Hitler, Amin, Saddam, Milosovic…these human monsters are real.  Ultimately, mankind has not outgrown war.

There will be other wars after Iraq.

How the Iraq War ends is how those wars will be waged.  Generals too often train to fight the last war again, but so too do the politicians who control them, and so too does the population that controls the politicians.

Osama Bin Laden, and every single bi-partisan investigation into the 911 attacks has shown that the trend of America’s Engage-and-Retreat foreign policy is what leads America’s enemies to attack in the reasonable expectation that if the attack is devastating enough, America will seek to appease their attackers rather than engage in wars that last more than a year or so.

So here we are-wondering how to end the war in Iraq; how to leave Iraq secure and stable enough so that my 2 year old son doesn’t have to go and invade an anarchic nation where terrorists have free reign on the scale of Lebanon in the 1980’s, Somalia in the early 1990’s, The Balkans in the mid 1990’s, or Afghanistan in the late 1990’s.

Today’s 18yr old soldiers were often the same age that my son is today when the US first invaded Iraq, engaged Saddam, and then arbitrarily declared victory and retreated at the demands of the American people who demanded it of their politicians who ordered the “victorious” retreat.

“We wage war that we may live in peace”-Aristotle

Will America wage war so that my son can live in peace when he’s 18, or will we engage in war and then retreat so that he can be the third generation to invade Iraq?  What effect do you think an American retreat from Iraq will have, and how will we have to deal with those effects?