Jane Ashworth analyses the views of a New York Times columnist on the potential consequences of pulling troops out of Iraq

Nicholas D Kristof writing in the New York Times declaims, ‘Heaven protect Iraq from well-meaning Americans. Iraqis are paying a horrendous price for the good intentions of well-meaning conservatives who wanted to liberate them. And now some well-meaning American liberals are seeking a troop withdrawal that would make matters even worse.’

Not sure the conservatives who took the US into war were quite as well meaning as Kristoff seems to want to believe, but lay that aside for a minute and he’s making a good point. ‘Our mistaken invasion has left millions of Iraqis desperately vulnerable, and it would be inhumane to abandon them now. If we stay in Iraq, there is still some hope that Iraqis will come to enjoy security and better lives, but if we pull out we will be condemning Iraqis to anarchy, terrorism and starvation, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of children over the next decade’

His reasoning is that the public health implications of any future break up of Iraq (an almost certain consequence of premature withdrawal) would boost the already rising rates of acute infant malnutrition. A stable state is needed to halt the decline but, he says, ‘If U.S. troops leave Iraq too soon, the country will simply fall apart. The Kurdish areas in the north may muddle along, unless Turkey intervenes to protect the Turkman minority or to block the emergence of a Kurdish state. The Shiite areas in the south might establish an Iranian-backed theocratic statelet that would establish order. But the middle of the country would erupt in bloody civil war and turn into something like Somalia. What would that mean? If Iraq were to sink to Somalia-level child mortality rates, one result by my calculation would be 203,000 children dying each year. If Iraq were to have maternal mortality rates as bad as Somalia's, that would be 9,900 Iraqi women dying each year in childbirth.’

Not being an epidemiologist, I don’t know if his expectations are on the right track. But he does raise a very practical argument against those who indulge their anti-Americanism and privilege the call for troops out above concerns for the well being of Iraqi people.