The heat of the debates is conditional, first of all, on the internal political situation, in particular on the extreme unpopularity of the Iraqi campaign and the fall in the credibility ratings of the respective governments due to the protracted Iraqi war. In general, recently not only the opposition, but also representatives of the ruling circles have been speaking of the necessity of pulling out of Iraq. The main stumbling point is how and when to pull out.
Many governments of the coalition countries whose forces still remain in Iraq are actually openly saying that after the parliamentary election to be held in Iraq on December 15 they intend to speedily bring their troops back home. A few days ago the Italian Defense Ministry announced that in January 2006 it would initiate a "detailed plan" for the pullout of its 3,000-strong contingent from Iraq, so as to finish the pullout by the end of that year. Before that the S. Korean government had decided to pull out, at the beginning of next year. a third of its 3,600 soldiers and officers serving in Iraq. Still earlier, British plans to completely withdraw from Iraq during 2006 had become known.
However, it is the US itself where this problem is most pressing on the internal political plane. The official US casualties in Iraq have exceeded already 2.000 dead, and the campaign costs the country over $2 billion weekly. Failures in Iraq have led to an unprecedented drop in G. Bush's popularity. According to the latest opinion polls, over 60 percent of Americans believe the war in Iraq should not have been started at all. Moreover, almost two thirds of the representatives of the US establishment, covered by the poll, believe the US attempts to set up a stable democratic regime in Iraq are doomed to failure.
Against this background, the Bush administration's critics in the Congress and the liberal press have launched a veritable offensive against the White house on the Iraq issue. Recently G. Bush's supporters had great difficulty in voting down a resolution tabled by the Democrats demanding a troop pullout from Iraq within 6 months. One of the authors of the resolution, Democratic Congressman, retired Marine colonel and Vietnam veteran, John Murtha, said the US should at once start pulling its troops out of Iraq, while he personally would be ready to put forward his withdrawal plan. Despite all the opposition, the Democrats got their way in having a commission set up for finding out if the US had had any real ground for attacking Iraq in 2003.
Local observers have noted that the previously muted discussions about the war in Iraq have grown into full-scale political strife inside the US itself, having thus undermined the consensus that existed since September 11, 2001. Thus, recently former US president Bill Clinton publicly declared that he thought the war in Iraq a great mistake of G. Bush's administration. And B. Clinton has the support of many Republican senators and influential Democrats.
According to many American and foreign experts, if the US fails to transfer the power in Iraq to local government authorities and pull out its troops by 2008, the current President would not be able to assure his Republican successor's accession to power. However, the present-day administration stubbornly continues to defend its policies in Iraq, accusing its political opponents of "defeatism", "betrayal of the Iraqi people" and even "collaboration with the enemy". Thus, vice-president Dick Cheney has accused the critics of the US administration of "political opportunism". President G. Bush himself was quick to point out that many of those who are displeased with his administration's course had once supported the invasion of Iraq, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, defending the US policies in Iraq, said that an immediate withdrawal of the US troops would be "a terrible thing for our country and the security of our people".
The Bush administration and the Pentagon refuse even to discuss any proposal for setting a time table for the US troop withdrawal from Iraq, alleging that it would only put spirit into the anti-American resistance. At present there are about 160,000 US servicemen in Iraq. True, the Pentagon intends to cut this figure down to 138,000 after December 15, but the question of full withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq is not even present on the official agenda.
Yet the Bush administration cannot completely close the discussion of that problem either, so it is getting bogged down in an ever more difficult situation. The continued terrorist attacks in Iraq and the unending clashes between the various groups show that the approval of the Iraqi constitution failed to become a stabilizing factor. The formation of stable power structures and a combat-worthy army that would be able to independently control the situation in the country is proceeding at a snail's pace.
Quite possibly, the forthcoming parliamentary election would not put an end to the violence and political instability. At the same time, the US cannot expect to pull out of Iraq "with honor" if it fails to form a local government, viable and loyal to Washington, and to assure a minimal level of stability and peace. However, it would be very hard, practically impossible, to do that. Iraq has been deeply split on the religious and ethnic lines into the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities. Under unfavorable conditions these divisions may lead to a civil war, and then the situation in Iraq might get much worse or altogether go out of control.
In this situation the Bush team has met with a difficult alternative: either to keep a large military contingent in Iraq indefinitely, or pull out at least a major part of the troops before November next year (the date of the intermediate election to Congress). Experts say both these variants may have serious and hard-to-foretell consequences for the US and its international standing.
Curiously, the war in Iraq has noticeably contributed to the growth of isolationist sentiments in the US. Now 42 percent of Americans believe that their country should "mind its own business in the world context and let other nations live as they can and like". Evidently, this would be the best way out of the Iraqi impasse for the US itself and for the rest of the world.
