Beneath the Bluster: Europeans Want America to Stay in Iraq

Beyond the eternal confidence in it’s own superior wisdom and humanism, the European public will march, whine, berate any passer-by, and buy anything that says “America out of Iraq”... or “America out of ___”... for that matter.

The reality of the “love of stability” lies elsewhere. It’s provided to you courtesy of none other than Georges Boosh. A Berlin based think-tank found European analysts who think that unlike America’s angry left, and Europe’s adolescent-level thinking mush middle, that the US must stay in Iraq. For Europe’s sake.

Against Troop Withdrawal

While the American public and policy debate revolves largely around exit strategies and “redeployment,” there is apparent consensus among European policy analysts that American troops should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future. In contrast to both European media opinion and the prevailing views of American liberals, our respondents supported sustained troop levels. Many consider the announcement of a timetable for withdrawal to be counter-productive and even outright dangerous, saying that lack of American involvement would drive Iraq into further chaos.

They are, however, no less distracted by the press’ blame and dwell approach to affairs in Iraq:

Dr. Reidar Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs who also runs the Iraq website Historiae, observed that the “main problem [with the current strategy] is the heavy emphasis on security instead of creative political initiatives to encourage national reconciliation.”

As if that wasn’t really happening. Besides, the stock international functionalry-types’ thinking might not think of the approach being taken in Iraq: letting the Iraqis call as much of the tune of political control as possible. “Creative” solutions from abroad would be just that, and of all Saddam’s problems, the biggest one was that he was a dictator. It gave him the means to suppress, kill, declare random wars, meddle in the affairs of numerous Arab states, and so on.