What Will Happen If/When We Leave Iraq?

Despite how he hates how Iraq has long been mismanaged, Ralph Peters writes that there is not a sensible way of leaving Iraq that won’t undercut American security and won’t produce massive innocent casualties. 

Peters also correctly points out that those who wish to pull our troops out of Iraq have not explained what will happen in the newly created void of security in that region. Our troops will no longer be in harm’s way, but what about the terrorists and the different factions in Irag? Here Peters lists what will most likely happen if/when we leave Iraq:

• After suffering a strategic defeat, al-Qaeda-in-Iraq comes back from the dead (those zombies again . . .) and gets to declare a strategic victory over the Great Satan.
• Iran establishes hegemony over Iraq’s southern oil fields and menaces the other Persian Gulf producers. (Sorry, Comrade Gore, even that Toyota Prius needs some gasoline . . . )
• Our troops will have died in vain. Of course, that doesn’t really matter to much of anyone in Washington, Democrat or Republican. So we’ll just write off those young Americans stupid enough to join the military when they could’ve ducked out the way most members of Congress did.
• A slaughter of the innocents – so many dead, the bodies will never be counted.

The battlefield is in Iraq and I think Peters makes some intelligent guesses as to what will happen if our troops leave. The future is always uncertain and there is no guarantee that American security will be further compromised by extricating our troops from Iraq. We will certainly have fewer opportunities to destroy the terrorists and their arsenal.

One argument I have frequently heard from the left that makes no sense to me is that by our presence in the Middle East we have just created more terrorists and have just served as a recruiting tool for young extremists. I fully agree that this is probably the case but I don’t think I have heard anyone explain why this is a bad thing or why this is a reason we should pull out. I understand that it’s not good (i.e., bad) to create more terrorists, but these Muslims who become terrorists simply because we kill their extremist brothers, in my opinion they aren’t worth keeping alive by the U.S. staying out of Iraq. And if we leave Iraq and the Middle East, won’t that action be an even larger rallying point for the terrorists? I’m sure much more terrorists can be recruited with a defeated, retreating America than an America that is constantly thinning their ranks.