Abstract: The Genesis of the US Problems in Iraq: a Seven point withdrawal Plan

The US current problems in Iraq are the result of six erroneous major decesions made by the Administration, based partly on faulty inteligence data, partly on wrong advise offerred by interested, secteian Iraqi politicians and partly on the lobbeying of Israeli supporters. The US went into Iraq unprepared for the aftermath of the war and hardly informed about the Iraqi demographic and political mosaic. It introduced secterian and ethnic distinctions into the Iraqi body politic and sought to isolate the Arab Sunnis and reduce their influence. A tragic result of the US approach was the disappearance of the of the Iraqi state and the emergence of communial and secterian politics with casts of beneficiries.The US turned out incapable of coming to terms with Arab nationalism and unwilling to work for national concilliation. All of this found expression in the constitution it inspired and guided. This consitution ignores the Arab character of Iraq. It lays the grounds for dividing the country into mini states. By creating a federal structure where the regions are proprieters of national resources and more powerful than the central government, the seeds of regional disputes and secterian conflicts are laid. The elections, largely won by Clerics and local chiefs, deepened the political impass facing the US. This is unsustainable for the US for several reasons. To begin with, the US budget cannot sustain the current pace of expenditure and the US government cannot ignore domestic pressing needs. Nor would the American public support an indefinate stay in Iraq entailing steady casualties. On the other hand, Iraq is hammared by a brutal insurgency, which cannot be abated without a fundamental change in Iraqi poltics and without forging a common vision of the country. Iraqis live under cinditions of no public services, no security, rank joblesness and absence of reconstruction. Iraq `s neighbors, in particular Iran, have not been helpful; if any thing, one of the major outcomes of the US intervention is the growth of influence of Iran and its sympathizerts and the alienation of Iraq`s neighbors from the US. Hence the paper wind up proposing a seven point plan for exit which saveguatrds the essentials of the US interest, reestablishs the Iraqi state and reassures its neigbors. This is done under a multilateral embrella with a major role for the US.