According to reports circulating in Iraq, on Sept. 20, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo conveyed a no-nonsense message to Iraqi President Barham Salih: If attacks continue on the United States Embassy in Baghdad and coalition forces, the U.S. will close the embassy and withdraw all U.S. forces and personnel and then target anyone and everyone involved in attacking Americans.
Pompeo is right to take a no-nonsense approach in response to targeting Americans, but an embassy closure and withdrawal from Iraq would be the wrong move. Previously, Pompeo shuttered the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq, after pro-Iranian militias targeted it. The result was not an end to Iranian-backed terror against Americans but rather its acceleration because it showed that terrorism works. Should the U.S. withdraw from Iraq, expect the Iranians or their proxy groups to replicate the Iranian strategy in Lebanon. Similar anti-American regimes or groups might further see in Iraq inspiration for their efforts to rid their countries of Americans. It might be comforting to believe that militia leaders and personnel would face a sustained onslaught after a U.S. withdrawal, but the U.S. is no longer known for its persistence, and the mood in Congress would not enable a Trump (let alone Biden) administration to sustain it.
Rather, if politicians like former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, Badr Corps leader Hadi al Amiri, and Asa’ib Ahl al Haq Secretary-General Qais Khazali continue to play a double game, a better model for a response might come from Panama.
In 1989, then-President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. forces into Panama City to arrest Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. Noriega was a colorful figure. Trained at the School of the Americas, he rose through the ranks of the Panamanian military after hitching himself to the fortunes of 1968 coup leader Omar Torrijos. Noriega subsequently allied with Washington in the Reagan-era “War on Drugs” and became an important CIA asset. That changed, of course, after Noriega became the military junta leader and both moved Panama closer to Cuba and became more deeply involved in the drug trade. Finally, on Dec. 20, 1989, U.S. forces invaded the capital in order to arrest Noriega for crimes committed against Americans, and two weeks later, he was on a U.S. Air Force MC-130E. He was tried and convicted by a Miami court and spent the next 17 years in U.S. custody. He subsequently served time in both France and Panama for money laundering and murder, respectively.
In many ways, Maliki is the most like Noriega. He rose to the top of the political ladder with U.S. support but then turned on his former patrons, covertly at first and then far more openly. Rather than build Iraq, he focused more on his personal portfolios, using his son Ahmed as a business agent. After falling from the premiership against the backdrop of the Islamic State’s rise in 2014, he served until 2018 as vice president, an extraconstitutional position meant largely as a pasture for has-beens or quota-filling wannabes.
The international community loudly criticized the U.S. invasion of Panama and the extradition of Noriega, but privately, most Panamanians breathed a sigh of relief that the Noriega problem was over. Today, Panama is a thriving democracy with, COVID-19 excepted, a booming economy. That simply would never have been possible had Noriega remained. Bush, who was so vehemently condemned, was subsequently eulogized by both the Left and the Right as a great statesman.
The U.S. need not launch an operation on the scale of 1989’s Operation Just Cause. Noriega was far more entrenched than Maliki and had the support (at least initially) of the Panamanian army. Nor need the U.S. target Maliki in the manner that it did the late Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani. But holding accountable the people instigating attacks is a far better option than fulfilling their goals via a unilateral withdrawal. Maliki, of course, can remain safe from Noriega’s fate by returning to the Damascene exile where he lived prior to Saddam Hussein’s ouster. Otherwise, Noriega’s Miami cell is vacant.
As for Amiri and Khazali: They are aware of their own declining legitimacy. On Sept.13, 2020, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani declared that “the parliamentary elections scheduled for next year are of great importance” and encouraged Iraqis to participate “widely.” This contradicts his pre-2018 election statement in which he likened elections to a glass of water from which one could choose to drink, an analogy that Iraqis widely see as responsible for lowering mainstream turnout while militia leaders continued to get their backers to the polls.
In short, next year’s elections will largely confirm what Amiri and Khazali do not want to admit: Iraqis want a better life, and they want politicians loyal first and foremost to the government in Baghdad rather than Tehran. Every day that passes, they become less relevant. Indeed, Iraqis realize that while the hashd al shaabi was at the forefront of fighting the Islamic State, their own groups were more interested in looting than in fighting as the volunteers answering Sistani’s call did. Certainly, the U.S. might target them, but it must do so in a way that does not allow them to wrap themselves in an Iraqi nationalist flag after they spent so much of their career denigrating it.
Pompeo is right that the U.S. should defend its personnel, and he is correct to convey to the Iraqi leadership the seriousness of U.S. intent. A pullout from Iraq, however, would neither fulfill U.S. strategic objectives nor stabilize Iraq. As the elder Bush demonstrated in Panama three decades ago, sometimes, the best way to address a cancer is with a scalpel rather than an ax.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
