The Ritter Scenario

Well, Scott Ritter sure is a party-pooper (snippets):

ZNet | Iraq The Saddam-ist / Islamist Resistance Will Win - by Scott Ritter; July 24, 2004 The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. As things stand, it appears that victory will go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance. ....The Iraqi resistance is no emerging "marriage of convenience," but rather a product of years of planning. Rather than being absorbed by a larger Islamist movement, Saddam's former lieutenants are calling the shots in Iraq, having co-opted the Islamic fundamentalists years ago, with or without their knowledge. One look at the list of the 55 "most wanted" members of the Saddam regime who remain at large reveals the probable chain of command of the Iraqi resistance today. It also underscores the success of Saddam's strategic decision nearly a decade ago to disassociate himself from Baathist ideology. Keep in mind that there was never a formal surrender ceremony after the U.S. took control of Baghdad. The security services of Saddam's Iraq were never disbanded; they simply melted away into the population, to be called back into service when and where they were needed. ....The transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi is a charade that will play itself out over the next weeks and months, and with tragic consequences. Allawi's government, hand-picked by the United States from the ranks of anti-Saddam expatriates, lacks not only a constituency inside Iraq but also legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqi citizens. The truth is that there never was a significant people- based opposition movement inside Iraq for the Bush administration to call on to form a government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily infiltrated by agents of Saddam's former security services. Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or how long they stay there, Allawi's government is doomed to fail. The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more the United States props up Allawi, the more discredited he will become in the eyes of the Iraqi people - all of which creates yet more opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit. We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the deaths of thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness the creation of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq that will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every bit as ignominiously as Israel did from Lebanon. The calculus is quite simple: the sooner we bring our forces home, the weaker this movement will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: the longer we stay, the stronger and more enduring this byproduct of Bush's elective war on Iraq will be. There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a question of winning but rather of mitigating defeat.

This could be considered a worst-case scenario, but it sure is a lot more likely than the Bush scenario (Iraq succumbs to American "democracy", and the rest of the Middle East then follows like falling cards). Get out of Iraq NOW, hand it over to the UN/NATO peacekeepers (with our full financial support), and start funneling our domestic tax $'s into hybrid and alternate fuel technology. It really is that simple. It's not a happy solution, because one does not, and never will, exist. But I've yet to see or hear a better one.

Juan Cole is not about to allow Ritter to outdo him on the party pooper scale:

....The only way for the US and UK and other foreign troops to get out of Iraq is for an Iraqi army to be reestablished pronto. The only way to do that pronto is essentially to bring back the Baath army. I'd say bringing back the non-dirty Baath regular army may be the best near-term solution, if the politics of it can be resolved; it isn't happening with any rapidity. Allawi may be trying to do that, but remember that the Kurds and the Sadrist Shiites won't exactly be elated, and the country could break up over it. To repeat, this is not Bush's mess. This is America's mess. It is not going away, there are no good options, and it may go terribly wrong on Kerry if he is elected. It is not my job to give you good news or make you feel better about the future. My American readers may as well understand that their country is caught in quicksand in Iraq and Afghanistan, and nobody is there to throw us a rope....