Abandoning Iraq

So the Coalition should just pack up and leave defenseless people whose lives are in danger in large part to foreign folly?

"Es gibt keine patriotische Kunst und keine patriotische Wissenschaft. Beide gehören, wie alles hohe Gute, der ganzen Welt an..." - J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832)

Ja, das Leben gehort den Lebenden an, und wer lebt, muss auf Wechsel gefasst sein.

But I prefer Kantian moral philosophy to Goethe's aphorisms, and our presumed duty to protect "defenseless people" fails the categorial imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." If the defense of the oppressed was a moral law, we would naturally have US troops in Dafur, Tibet, Burma, downtown Detroit, and an infinity of other places.

That people may suffer if the US leaves is firstly an assumption not a fact-- we don't know if that is true. Secondly, it seems apparent that defenseless people are suffering and tens of thousands have died because US troops are in Iraq. If we dismiss Kantian ethics and put the moral basis of our decision on a utiliterian basis, then the higher morality is that which causes either more help or less harm, which may in fact be the US's unilateral departure.

Realistically, I think it's likely that if the US left Iraq, the Iraqi myrmidons of the US imperium will suffer. But, equally realistically, such internal blood-lettings have been a part of that world for the last thousand years that venerates the lex talones, and we have no more hope of changing these deep-seated tribalistic passions than we do in sweeping back the ocean.