Marble Composition

Staged Withdrawal or Stay The Course?

So where do we go from here?

First, we need to look at some lawyer-like parsing from our Yale-Alumni President:

"An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, or the broader Middle East, as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations," Bush said.

Pay attention to the word "immediate". Any one with any brain would never call for that, but that always leaves plenty of wiggle room for withdrawing in stages. You can bet they stuck that in to say, "See? We were against immediate buh buh buh, we were for declaring victory and bringing our soldiers home with honor".

We also have this from Dam Froomkin at the Washington Post:

"I think immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake," Bush said. "I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East would be -- are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States. So I appreciate her right to protest. I understand her anguish. I met with a lot of families. She doesn't represent the view of a lot of the families I have met with. And I'll continue to meet with families."

But as several media reports pointed out this morning, critics of the Iraq war are not advocating an immediate withdrawal from the greater Middle East. And many are not even calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq. Rather, they are asking for a specific plan to bring the troops home, and maybe an acknowledgement of error.

Hmm. There it is again. "Immediate". The troubling thing is that no one on the Democrat side of the issue is saying much of anything. Ah, politics.

Let's get on to the more important thing, and the original question posed.

The Crux:

For the last two years-plus, the dilemma of our presence in Iraq has been that we're both the glue holding the place together and the solvent tearing it apart. That painful paradox is the root of the paralysis and denial across most of the political landscape -- certainly in Washington.

A Solution:

ARMY GENERAL SUPPORTS WITHDRAWAL....My argument in favor of a public withdrawal plan for Iraq has been based on three points: (1) it will motivate the Iraqis to take training of their own security forces more seriously, (2) it will reduce local support for the insurgency, much of which is based on a belief that we plan to occupy Iraq forever, and (3) we're going to have trouble keeping 135,000 troops in Iraq much past 2006 anyway. Today, the top operations commander for Iraq backed me up:

The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country.

Maj Gen Douglas Lute, director of operations at US Central Command, yesterday said the reductions were part of a push by Gen John Abizaid, commander of all US troops in the region, to put the burden of defending Iraq on Iraqi forces.

....He said: "We believe at some point, in order to break this dependence on the...coalition, you simply have to back off and let the Iraqis step forward.

"You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country."

That's some pretty high level support for points #1 and #2, and although Lute can't publicly acknowledge point #3, all you have to do is look at the latest year-to-date recruiting figures to see that the Army's manpower problems are becoming very real.

It's worth noting that Lute is providing grounds not just for a withdrawal plan, but for a public withdrawal plan. After all, point #1 is common sense: anyone who's ever been in charge of anything knows that things don't get done unless people have firm goals and firm deadlines. Iraq's leaders simply aren't going to take troop training seriously until they figure out that America won't be around forever — at which point they're going to need security forces of their own in order to keep their government intact. And the only way to make that warning credible is to make it public.

Point #2 is similar. Insurgencies depend on support from the surrounding population, and public support for the Iraqi insurgency is partly motivated by hatred of the U.S. occupation. The only way to "undercut the perception of occupation" is to convince them that we aren't going to be around forever — and the only way to do that credibly is to do it publicly.

We simply don't get any benefit from points #1 and #2 unless people believe we're serious about meeting our goals in Iraq and then leaving, and the only way to do that is to make our intentions public. It's true that things might end badly in Iraq anyway, but at least we will have done everything we possibly could to make it work. Considering how disastrous a failed Iraqi state would be, we can't afford to do any less.

Not that the Bush administration would choose to do what Mr. Drum might suggest, but it's a plan, and that's a lot more than what Bush has been offering lately. "Stay the course", what does that mean? Even Jon Stewart (who runs a fake news program) asked that question. There's no definition to winning in "stay the course".

This war was a bad idea to start with. If we lump the lack of any plan for the aftermath on top of extremely poor execution, and toss in gross incompetence, it doesn't paint a pretty picture.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 8/25/2005 06:46:00 PM