Abandon Iraq to save it

CONDITIONS IN IRAQ grow more appalling each day, and a substantial majority of Iraqis now believe that the continued presence of U.S. troops is a major cause of the ongoing carnage. Despite this, supporters of the Bush administration continue to insist that if we withdraw U.S. troops, we’ll be “abandoning” Iraq.

“Abandoning” Iraq to what, exactly? To civil war? Iraq already has that, thanks in large part to us. Maybe things will get worse if we leave -- but maybe our departure is the only thing that can save Iraq. The Iraqis think they’ll be better off without us.

The U.S. does have a deep responsibility to aid the Iraqis. But let’s talk about what is, and isn’t, “abandonment.” Invading Iraq without a plan for protecting crucial infrastructure and civilian lives was a form of abandonment.

Failing to complete -- or even begin -- most of the reconstruction projects we promised was a form of abandonment.

Taking such a heavy-handed approach to combating insurgents that thousands of civilian deaths were written off as “collateral damage” was a form of abandonment.

Refusing to engage with Iran and Syria, the two regional powers whose cooperation is most crucial to slowing the violence, is a form of abandonment.

Most of all, keeping 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq when their presence is only making things worse is a form of abandonment.

If we’re serious about helping the Iraqi people, there are still some things we can do. For a start, we should withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq -- something the bipartisan Iraq Study Group appears likely to recommend.

That doesn’t mean there’s no longer any role for the U.S. military. In the shorter term (the next six months to a year), redeploying some U.S. troops to secure Iraq’s borders might diminish the likelihood that Iraq’s civil war will morph into a full-scale proxy war among regional powers. Similarly, U.S. military advisors should continue to provide training to the Iraqi army and police in the shorter term, but such programs need to be constantly reassessed to make sure that the Iraqis we’re working with don’t simply become U.S.-trained members of ethnic death squads.

At this point, though, most of what we can do for Iraq won’t directly involve the U.S. military. In a May 2006 report written for the Center for American Progress, Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis call for the U.S. to help organize an international peace conference on Iraq, bringing together Iraqi government and militia leaders, along with representatives of key neighboring states, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria and Iran. The goal: get leaders of the various rival factions to hammer out a cease-fire agreement, an agreement on federalism and division of resources, a timetable for disbanding the militias and, perhaps, agreement on a regional or international force to help keep the peace.

Such a conference -- modeled on the 1995 Dayton conference that ended the war in Bosnia -- wouldn’t produce pretty results. But in Iraq, as in Bosnia, even an imperfect peace would be better than ongoing carnage.

We should also redouble the U.S. commitment to Iraqi reconstruction. Though our credibility in the region is shot, our money could still help make things better, and we should push other donor states to pony up as well. A genuine international commitment to Iraqi reconstruction -- job creation, the restoration of basic services such as electricity and healthcare and support for civil society and honest, effective local government could help give Iraqis the motivation to pull together. If we don’t want our financial help to be seen as poisonous, though, we need to let the United Nations or a regional entity administer the funds (sorry, Halliburton).

But the next year is likely to be bad for Iraqis, no matter what. So what about those Iraqis who would rather not hang around, ducking suicide bombers and hoping things will get better?

The least we can do is make it easier for them to get out of Iraq -- starting now. We should encourage neighbors such as Jordan to welcome refugees -- and, as George Packer insists in this week’s New Republic, we should make Iraqi refugees welcome in the U.S.

Last year, Packer reports, the U.S. quota for Iraqi refugees was fewer than 200, and our Baghdad embassy doesn’t even issue visas. The administration should grant temporary protected status in the U.S. to Iraqis fleeing the civil war. And, as Packer warns, we should get ready now with “contingency plans for massive airlifts and ground escorts” for the most vulnerable Iraqis, in case the worst happens.

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” an Army officer reportedly said during the Vietnam War. With so many dead, and so many Iraqis calling on us to leave, insisting that the withdrawal of U.S. troops is “abandoning” Iraq comes to much the same thing.

rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com