A surfeit of certainty

In today’s paper the story of Cindy Sheehan getting arrested at the White House was right next to the story of five Shi’ite elementary school teachers being lined up against a wall and executed by Sunni terrorists. Intentional or not, it’s enough to make me question the wisdom of the “get out now” crowd.

One popular argument on the anti-war side has been that the presence of the U.S. actually exacerbates the violence in Iraq and that it will only begin to subside if U.S. troops leave. However, it’s hard to see why there will be fewer instances of things like the slaying of those five teachers if we leave. I’m not sure we should assume things can’t get worse than they are.

But there is a more pessimistic argument for leaving – namely, that Iraq is going to descend into increasing violence and sectarian strife no matter what we do, so we might as well leave now and spare ourselves the additional casualties. The more positive spin on this course of action is the “declare victory and get out” strategy that some have advocated; we toppled Saddam and made sure there were no WMD’s – mission accomplished!

I just wish I could be as sure what the right thing to do is as a lot of other people seem to be.