In celebration of the first anniversary of his blog, Dr. Demarche asked other bloggers to address the following Iraq-related topic:

What if we brought the troops home tomorrow, as those who oppose the war clamor for? What would the future of Iraq, the Middle East and the United States look like?

Exercising literary license, I’ve chosen not to interpret “tomorrow” literally. As the starting point for the narrative history I’ve constructed, I posit that President Bush, in next January’s State of the Union address, establishes a date-certain for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

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March 31, 2007

The Iraq elections of December 2005 were a great victory for Iraqis, but not for Americans. With the elections over, the Zarqawi-led insurgents changed their tactics: from using terror to persuade Iraqi civilians to stay away from the voting booths to using terror to persuade Americans to get out of Iraq. During the month following the elections, the American death toll reached an all-time high by a wide margin.

The American public, already disenchanted with the war, reacted in a predictable fashion. President Bush’s approval rating plunged to a level not seen since the Watergate era. Editorial voices that had backed his “stay the course” strategy withdrew their support. Congressional Republicans facing election in the fall of 2006 voiced their doubts in public and intimated that it was time to set a date-certain for the withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq. Pundits with long memories compared the impact on public and Congressional opinion of the post-election spike in the American death toll with the Tet offensive.

    Course Change

Faced with this clamor and fearful of losing control of Congress, Bush used his January 2006 State of the Union address to announce a change of course:

We have achieved our goals in Iraq. Last month, more than ten million Iraqis refused to be intimidated by the terrorists. Because of their bravery, Iraq now has a democratically-elected permanent government that will serve as a beacon of light for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East.

We have always said that our military would not stay in Iraq a day longer than necessary. With the establishment of a permanent government, that day has arrived. Before entering this Chamber, I signed an Executive Order establishing September 30 of this year as the last day that the United States will have military forces in Iraq.

(Standing ovation)

Between now and then, we will accelerate the Iraqification program that has been underway since 2004. I am confident that with the additional training their security forces will receive over the next eight months, the democratic government of Iraq will prevail over the evil-doers.

(Standing ovation)

    The Thrill of Victory

The reaction to the speech was electric. Overnight, Bush’s approval rating nearly doubled, approaching fifty percent. With only a few exceptions – notably, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and the Weekly Standard – the fourth estate praised the President’s speech. In anticipation of an immediate and sharp reduction in war-related spending, the stock and bond markets soared. In Britain, Prime Minister Blair, who had been notified of the impending change in U.S. policy, announced that his country’s troops would be withdrawn by the same timetable.

None of these reactions were surprising. The surprise came a week later, when Zarqawi announced that coalition troops would no longer be targeted by insurgent forces. Almost immediately, American (and British) casualties dropped to nearly zero. While Zarqawi had made no promises regarding attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces, such actions dropped sharply. By early March 2006, the level of violence in Iraq was lower than at any time since the March 2003 American invasion.

As winter turned to spring, it looked like victory in Iraq had been achieved. The Iraqis showed themselves to be fully capable of dealing with the far less frequent acts of terror. There was a worldwide consensus that, as Bush had asserted in January, America’s objectives had been fulfilled. A discernable thaw in Franco-American and German-American relations took place.

During what would later be labeled “The Phony Peace,” that small segment of the media that had taken exception to Bush’s new course dissented from this consensus. Day after day and week after week, the editors of the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and the Weekly Standard warned that Zarqawi was a masterful poker player who was bluffing peace to insure that the American commitment to withdraw its troops was kept. The dissenters predicted that when the withdrawal had reached the point of no return, a new wave of violence far more intense than any previously experienced would be unleashed in Iraq.

    The Agony of Defeat

By early September 2006, the point of no return had been reached, as fewer than 25,000 American troops remained in Iraq. Even if it had been logistically possible for the U.S. to reverse the withdrawal, electoral politics would have ruled it out. Well aware that Labor Day marks the official start of the campaign season, Zarqawi chose this moment to terminate the phony peace. In what was coined “The Ramadan Offensive,” the insurgents, who had been gathering their forces and stockpiling explosives, simultaneously attacked all of Iraq’s major cities. Thousands of Iraqis were killed.

Having seen that their government was incapable of providing security, the patience of the Shi’a majority snapped. Even Ayatollah Sistani was powerless to prevent the long-feared civil war. Not surprisingly, the Kurds reacted by announcing the formation of an independent Kurdistan. On the same day, Turkey mobilized its forces along its border with Kurdistan. The confrontation there resembles that in Kashmir, where Indian and Pakistani forces eye each other across the line of control.

As the illusion of victory was transformed into the reality of defeat, Bush’s approval ratings plummeted and Republican Congressional candidates anticipated defeat in the November elections. How could they respond to the Democrats’ claim that it was all for nothing?

The results of the election confirmed the Republicans’ worst fears, as the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress. Bush, now truly a lame-duck president, was in no position to withstand the Democrats’ vengeance. In particular, he signed a Democrat-sponsored bill requiring a Congressional Declaration of War before Americans can be put in harm’s way. Responding to Republican criticisms that this would make it far more difficult to prosecute the War on Terror, the Democrats – led by Senator Kennedy – responded that there had been no terrorist attacks on American soil in the more than five years since 9/11 and that the dangers emanating from the “Imperial Presidency” were far greater than the dangers from terrorism. The Senator’s statement that Americans should overcome their “inordinate fear of terrorism” was reminiscent of a speech in which President Carter criticized Americans for their “inordinate fear of communism.”

With the American public having shown its intolerance for a long, drawn-out war and the ascendancy of the Congressional Democrats, Middle Eastern governments were quick to recognize that the Bush Doctrine was dead. Much to their delight, the autocrats no longer had to fear the pre-emptive use of military force, as it was inconceivable that a Congressional Declaration of War would be enacted if America had not been attacked. With the beacon of democratic light having been extinguished in Iraq, they also concluded that the U.S. was no longer in a position to exert diplomatic pressure for democratization.

By early this year (2007), these perceptions had produced changes in on-the-ground realities. In Egypt, President Mubarek backed away from the electoral reforms introduced in 2005. Syria, no longer facing the possibility of American military action, began to re-infiltrate Lebanon with the hope of re-establishing the status quo ante.

Nobody was more pleased by the changes in American policy than Iran’s President. Having offended world opinion with his “Israel must be wiped off the map” remarks in the fall of 2005, Ahmadinejad made his amends by continuing to play a cat-and-mouse game with the EU3 and the UN’s IAEA weapons inspectors. After the Democrats took control of Congress, the Iranian firebrand knew that the game was over and Iran had won. Absent the possibility of American military action, there was no reason to tolerate any further violation of Iranian sovereignty. In December 2006, the last weapon inspector left Iranian soil.

The exit of the inspectors set off alarm bells in Israel. Already concerned that the retreat of U.S. power might be the prelude to a lessening of the American commitment to its security, Israel now faced the virtually certain prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran bent on its destruction. A substantial increase in the Israeli defense budget – with most of the increase used to purchase long-range fighter-bombers – signaled to the world that the Israeli government, unlike its counterpart in Washington, had not ruled out the use of pre-emptive force.