I got kind of behind on reading over Thanksgiving break but today I read an interesting article in the Washington Post from last Monday. The gist is that Pentagon insiders believe we have three options remaining in Iraq.
After the Thanksgiving Day slaughter in which over 200 Shiites were killed, I think it's clear Iraq is pretty far gone. However, I'm not a military expert and thus I can't say whether there is any chance we could achieve anything by staying longer or if we should cut our losses. The Iraqis don't deserve to pay for all our monumental screw ups in the way we invaded Iraq but if we are ultimately not making progress by staying, why are we still there? The departure of American troops will likely contribute to instability but then there's a possibility that the threat of American troops leaving will cause the Iraqis to start getting their shit together. Any thoughts?
"Go Big," the first option, originally contemplated a large increase in U.S. troops in Iraq to try to break the cycle of sectarian and insurgent violence. A classic counterinsurgency campaign, though, would require several hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed Iraqi police. That option has been all but rejected by the study group, which concluded that there are not enough troops in the U.S. military and not enough effective Iraqi forces, said sources who have been informally briefed on the review.
[snip]
"Go Home," the third option, calls for a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops. It was rejected by the Pentagon group as likely to push Iraq directly into a full-blown and bloody civil war.
The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one -- "Go Long" -- and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.
After the Thanksgiving Day slaughter in which over 200 Shiites were killed, I think it's clear Iraq is pretty far gone. However, I'm not a military expert and thus I can't say whether there is any chance we could achieve anything by staying longer or if we should cut our losses. The Iraqis don't deserve to pay for all our monumental screw ups in the way we invaded Iraq but if we are ultimately not making progress by staying, why are we still there? The departure of American troops will likely contribute to instability but then there's a possibility that the threat of American troops leaving will cause the Iraqis to start getting their shit together. Any thoughts?
5 Comments:
I really doubt completely or substantially withdrawing troops at this point will have any positive effect on the stability and security of Iraq. If the goal is to prod the Iraqis to "get their shit together," I doubt leaving no support structure in place with a fragile government would do the trick.
Ideally, having security forces (both American and Iraqi) in all places at all times would, I think, do the greatest good to stabilize and secure the country. But since our arrogant and short-sighted leaders didn't adequately consider the worst-case scenarios, which we're living with now, before the invasion, it looks like that's off the table.
So to that end, I favor an increase in troops to the maximum we can (preferably heavily armored to, you know, avoid death) to try and help the Iraqi government onto some more secure footing. In the mean time, Iraqi security forces can try and step onto that secure footing and, with a phased withdrawal plan contingent on certain government stability and capability benchmarks, would be the best-case solution to provide the people of Iraq with a reasonably capable government. I feel we're obligated to leave them with at least that.
And where do we get these troops? I agree that we could theoretically improve the situation if we had another 200,000 troops to be "in all places at all times" but even adding a tenth of that, John McCain's suggestion, is a stretch and simply wouldn't change the dynamics on the ground (it would be more of a political stunt). There's no public tolerance for a draft and the public won't support keeping troops in Iraq much longer without seeing some signs of improvement. Call me a pessimist but I think we're past the point where more troops were feasible and could have made a difference.
I haven't got a solution to the "we have no more troops" problem, especially since NATO's kind of stretched thin in Afghanistan right now.
Though I can't say I agree, Adam, Charles Rangel would say the solution is reinstating the draft.
What are your thoughts on this? Do the pros of possibly stabilizing conditions outweigh the cons of mandatory service (especially high mortality rate it may entail, considering the recent upswing of violence into a civil war, as well as the widespread opposition it will recieve)?
I would guess they wouldn't, but what do you think?
My thoughts on a draft are this:
Avoid a draft like it's the plague. The bulk of people who don't want to be boots on the ground aren't going to be dependable or committed. I don't know that a conscript army would be any more adept at effectively stabilizing Iraq than a short-staffed army.
Maybe the best solution is for our president to say to the world "I was wrong. I wrecked Iraq. We want to leave. But we want to leave Iraq a stable place. Will you give us a hand by committing some troops? We'll build a command structure so we're all more or less in charge. We'll even chip in for some of your costs." The president is far too stubborn for this to happen, I think. And I don't know if anyone would respond to the call. But having the international community working toward stabilizing the country, hopefully even with the support of some predominantly Muslim countries (to better understand the cultural nuances and deflect some imperialism criticisms), might be a reasonable path forward?
I don't know. I'm kind of thinking in the comment box here.
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