Iraq is a complex country, a complex country with a complex population and a complex history.

It was a failure to appreciate these nuances that allowed President Bush and a majority of Americans to conclude that invading Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a democratic, pro-American regime would be no big deal — or at least nothing the U.S. hadn’t done before and couldn’t do again.

The costs of this naïveté, in American terms, are plain for anyone to see.

Over 3,000 dead American soldiers ...

Over 30,000 more wounded ...

Over $300 billion dollars spent ...

And, adding insult to injury, an emboldened Iran that, freed from one erstwhile enemy, has rediscovered another — America — and is giving us the finger as it pursues nuclear weapons.

One could argue that the invasion and occupation of Iraq might have been worth all this had we accomplished one of our primary objectives — namely, a stable democracy in the heart of the Arab world — but we haven’t. Not by a long shot.

Iraq is, quite literally, going to Shi’ite. The Shi’a majority that was long kept down (along with the Kurds) by Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime has used its newfound political muscle to fashion an Iraq that serves its interests. Disgruntled Sunnis, including secular Ba’athists and fanatical Jihadists, have not ceded power willingly, attacking institutions of the fledgling Iraqi government and staging terrorist attacks against Shi’ite targets. Radical Iranian-backed cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, who now controls some 30 seats in the new parliament and is keeping Iraq’s prime minister on a leash, has responded to these Sunni provocations by unleashing his own bands of thugs — so-called “death squads” — to carry out equally heinous attacks against innocent Sunnis.

The result is a cycle of sectarian bloodshed that threatens to make Iraq the Yugoslavia of the Middle East.

It’s possible that had we not made some well-documented mistakes at the outset of the occupation, Iraq might be in better shape today — perhaps on the road to becoming that beacon of democracy Bush and the neocons dreamt.

Whatever errors we have made in Iraq, however — starting, arguably, with the invasion — our focus now should be on how we can extricate ourselves from this mess without leaving total chaos behind.

Two schools of thought predominate in the debate over the way forward.

The phased-withdrawal school, put forward by the Democrats in Congress and a growing number of Iraqnophobic Republicans, argues that only the Iraqis themselves can take the measures and make the compromises that will save their country, and that the only way to pressure them down this path is to remove the crutching American military presence, albeit gradually and with an eye toward events on the ground.

The ‘surge’ school — advanced by President Bush and his remaining allies in Congress — counters that security in Iraq is a prerequisite for the political settlement those in the phased-withdrawal school seek, and that the only way to achieve that security is to dispatch reinforcements to pacify areas, like Baghdad, where Sunnis and Shi’ites are massacring each other.

I don’t know which of these schools of thought, if either, is correct. I do know that both have merits and drawbacks, and that whichever is followed will be second-guessed. Still, a phased withdrawal and a ‘surge’ strike me as the two wisest courses of action — both with a reasonable, though diminishing, chance of achieving something we will be able to call success. And I believe that most of the figures advancing both ideas have a relatively nuanced view of the situation and an understanding that any decision at this point — as is often the case in war — is between bad and worse.

There is a third school of thought, however — one heard more often at rallies and on blogs than in the halls of power — and it’s that of the antiwar movement (and here I’m speaking to the antiwar movement of those on the left who opposed the war from the outset, not the growing portion of Americans who have understandably soured on the war and believe we should cut our losses).

The antiwar movement’s proposed policy is attractive in its simplicity:

Withdraw American troops from Iraq. All of them. Now.

What differentiates this position from the others is that many, if not most, who hold it couch their rationale in a language of what’s best for the Iraqi people (if we can still speak of such an entity). If you read my fellow columnists Jeff Purcell and Laura Taylor on a regular basis, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Jeff and Laura would have you believe that the situation in Iraq cannot possibly get worse than it is now.

But it could get worse. And, if we pulled out tomorrow, it probably would get worse. A lot worse.

Radical Shi’ites and Sunnis, no longer hindered by American troops, would redouble their efforts to kill each other, staging yet bloodier terrorist attacks and continuing the ethnic cleansing of multi-confessional areas. Saudi Arabia and Iran would step in on behalf of their respective coreligionists, as they’ve said they would, igniting a full-blown regional war.

Of course, none of this would affect us (in the short run). Those most hurt by a precipitous American withdrawal would be the same people most hurt by the American invasion: Iraqis.

Jeff and Laura don’t want you to believe this because they don’t want to believe it. In fact, insofar as they’ll acknowledge the civil war that’s raging in Iraq, it’s one being stoked by America.

No, they’d much rather cling to their caricatured images of marauding American troops wantonly slaughtering innocent Iraqis and pillaging their homeland like the colonialists that we are.

It’s not that simple, folks, because Iraq is a complex country in complex times. To assume that the solution to its problems is as simple as American troops leaving tomorrow would be to make the same mistake all over again.

Ben Birnbaum is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at bhb9@cornell.edu. Infomaniacs Anonymous appears Tuesdays.