When Should the U.S. Withdraw From Iraq?
In this week’s CFR.org Online Debate, Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, and James Phillips, a research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the conservative Heritage Foundation, debate the consequences of withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.
Phillips says those who advocate an immediate troop withdrawal “underestimate the costs and risks of abdicating our security responsibilities in Iraq.” Leaving Iraq would be “a tragic mistake” and could create a “much greater humanitarian catastrophe and a failed state that would serve as a springboard for exporting Islamic revolution and terrorism,” he says.
Carpenter, on the other hand, says proponents of a long-term occupation of Iraq, like Republican presidential candidate John McCain and others, “tend to ignore the enormous price America has already paid in blood and treasure.” He also says it is unlikely that the United States “will ever achieve the goals that it had when it invaded Iraq in 2003.”
To read more of this Online Debate, click here.
