Thomas Friedman shouldn't be so modest. The opening line of his column today proclaims his inability, based on his current trip to Iraq, to see the big picture there. But buried in his description of three experiences from his journey is a conclusion as unequivocal as it is harrowing.
In the first anecdote in [subscription-required] "Letter from Baghdad" Friedman describes his experience visiting a U.S. Army platoon based in Baghdad's Ameriya neighborhood. As the author explains, this had been an affluent Sunni area that had first been ravaged by Shia militias and then by pro-Al Qaedi Sunnis who had 'imposed a reign of Islamist terror" on the neighborhood. Secular Sunnis from the area banded to together to form the “Ameriya Knights" and fight alongside the Americans to expel the Al-Qaeda terrorists.
While Friedman takes some encouragement from this development, he also observes that "peace in Iraq has to be built on a Shiite-Sunni consensus" not merely from "a Sunni-Sunni war that has pushed mainstream Iraqi Sunnis into our camp to fight the jihadist Sunnis."
That's when the columnist flatly warns:
[T]he surge has created nothing that is self-sustaining. That is, pull us out and this whole place still blows in 10 minutes.
On the center-left, Friedman is perhaps the most respected observer of foreign affairs. Here he issues a dire and unambiguous warning of the result of a U.S. pullout. Yet that is precisely what every Dem presidential candidate is proposing, along with virtually all the deep thinkers of the MSM punditocracy.
The next time Hillary, Obama & Co. get together for a debate and offer their withdrawal plans, wouldn't you like to see the moderator confront them with Friedman's admonition? Imagine:
Candidate: Under my proposal, virtually all U.S. combat troops will be out of Iraq by March.
Moderator: Thomas Friedman recently visited Iraq and has concluded that if we leave, the country "blows in 10 minutes." Is he wrong? If so, based on what? If not, how can America abandon millions of Iraqis?
It would be epic. What are the odds we'll see it happen?
