NEWS: US Drops Only Iraq Exit Strategy

POLITICS: US Drops Only Iraq Exit Strategy

Since before any US troops even set foot on Iraqi soil (the second time, that is) critics of the war plan, who unfortunately were not numerous, vocal or powerful enough to stymie team Bush's efforts to invade the country, complained about the lack of any coherent "exit strategy" for getting US troops out of Iraq after toppling Hussein's government. Bush didn't provide much of an answer to these critics then, and only in the wake of the spiraling disaster that Iraq has become has he even deigned to address the question as something that might be important. With public opinion surging against the war and increasingly in favor of some form of scheduled withdrawal of US troops. Bush continues to be mute on the subject except to offer vague platitudes such as "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." Sounds like a great talking point, I'm sure Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the rest of the conservative media were alerted to Bush's intricate plan for victory as soon as it was announced.

But the plan to train an Iraqi military and police force to take over control of the country hasn't exactly panned out the way Pentagon strategists thought it might. With the insurgency still going strong and defying the best efforts by Iraqi and US military forces to control it, the US military has decided to abandon its strategy to train Iraqis as replacements for US soldiers. Apparently the generals no longer believe that Iraqis will ever be able to "stand up" on their own, which raises the question of when, if ever, will US troops be able to "stand down?"

So the bottom line according to the military brass is that unless we want to pull our troops out and watch as Iraq becomes (even more of) a smoldering ruin, Iraqi security personnel can no longer be trusted to handle the insurgency, especially considering that some of the forces have turned out to be insurgents themselves. So if training Iraqis has been all but abandoned as the means by which the US can extricate itself from this enormous mess, could unilateral US withdrawal be an option on the table? Not any time soon, at least according to a Bush speech as recent as Friday.

How, exactly, would Iraqi terrorists become even more "emboldened"? With weekly headlines documenting bombing attacks taking casualties in the hundreds, it seems like the footing of terrorists and insurgents is pretty solid at this point, at least as long as the US military sticks to its current plan. Maybe pulling out some US assets would remove targets for the insurgents and give the Iraqis some sense of self-governance that would reduce terrorist attacks. Maybe not. But one thing is clear - what's being done right now is not working, and with the abandonment of training Iraqis to handle domestic security problems as a means to facilitate a US exit, there seems to be little end in sight.

I'm convinced that the only way to end the sectarian violence would to to kill off one of the two major sects.

One of the major reasons that people say a pull-out is not an option is that there would be a genocide committed.

My point is, this whole situation is fucked. There is no way to win.

We either:
A) Stick around and let them pick eachother and our troops off in small numbers each day. (which could go on forever, IE: Israel/Palstine)
B) Commit the genocide ourselves and be done with it.
C) Bail out, say we're sorry, and let them sort out the mess we've created.

I don't know about you, but none of these options seem very paletable to me.

Who wants to move to Brazil?

i'm never surprised anymore by what i read on the war and Bush.

You could tell me Bush has decided to bomb only Iraqi children's hospitals...and i would not even blink.

*sigh*

It would make sense... get them before they grow old and hateful towards us for putting them in the childrens hospitals to begin with. Now your thinking like a bush!

Probably, but I can't really picture everyone being pleased with the dividing lines. It won't take long before the newly divded countries start attacking eachother.

Maybe I'm just overly pessimistic about the whole thing, but I haven't seen much to be optimistic about.

I can't see any other solution myself. The Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites there have despised each other for centuries, they only way the country was able to stay together was to have a strong man like Hussein in there ruling with an iron fist in the first place.

There's some major obstacles to partitioning Iraq, however. First is Turkey. Turkey is seriously opposed to any sort of Kurdish state being established, since its significant Kurdish population is right on the border of where Iraq's Kurds would be, and they're afraid of a Turkish Kurd uprising as they attempt to secede and join with a new Turkish state.

A second problem is the US fear, which is probably legitimate, that any independent Shiite state would become a pawn of nearby Iran while an independent Sunni state would fall under the influence of Saudi Arabia. Right now both countries exert some influence in Iraq but neither is a dominant player - and Iraq served as a useful secular buffer between the two countries for almost a century. Splitting them up could end up putting these two regional powers in direct apposition to one another, and that's a recipe for disaster (not to mention a threat to oil production as one or both of the countries would almost certainly try to exert naval control over the Persian gulf in a power play.)

But again, like you said, I don't see many other options presenting themselves.

that was the biggest, and still current, mistake the Bush machine made.
they should have realised that if they were to invade Iraq, it would splinter.

it is an ethnic and tribal nation, in an ethnic and tribal area, that was only held together by a dictator's regime. in taking out the dictator, it became inevitable.

Apparently nobody within shouting distance of the Bush Administration had ever heard of what happened to the nation formerly known as Yugoslavia after Tito left the picture.

Well, Maliki doesn't want Baghdad divided.
Thing is, what do you get if you partition Iraq between the religous tribes that are already fighting? The exact same tribes fighting, except over "borders". The drawing of arbitrary borders does nothing to address the deep seated hate and mistrust they have for one another. Like you said, the most likely outcome in that scenario is that Shiite Iraq becomes part of Iran and Kurdistan in Iraq comes under fire from Turkey, PLUS the infighting continues.

The two solutions here are: 1) play by middle east rules: establish a violent dictatorship that ruthlessly eliminates any opposition or 2) spend a long long long time fighting the causes of radical, violent islam.
Neither is really acceptable.

I think the US needs to have a much less visible presense in Iraq but still make it known that it's military interests are present. A full scale WWII style occupation is so pointelss and counter productive in this type of situation

I think it's becoming more and more evident that there was never actually a strategy to leave Iraq. I, like many of the guys I served with over there, were of the feeling that the US was establishing a permanat presence in the country. I got the feeling that Bush was hoping for a "benevolent" occupation, along the lines of West Germany or Japan following WWII. Instead what they got was a quagmire of secterian violence and a corrupt, inept government. The ongoing violence assures the need for a continued military presence in Iraq...and if the political leadership changes in '08 and pulls out the troops...the continued violence could likely pull in all the reigonal players into a WWI in minature bloodbath, further destabalizing the Middle East. As long as that conflict remains contained within the Middle East, it isn't seen as such a bad loss by Bush and his advisors. It might push the cost of oil up, but it'll also guarantee customers for our military industrial producers and maybe lead to some political alliances in the reigon (hello Saudi Arabia...remember us? your old pals?)

Partition isn't likely to work for Iraq. It might be okay for the Kurds, who already have a fairly autonomous area in the North with lots of oil. But, the Sunnis are not going to settle for the "fertile crescent" along the Tigiris and Euphrates rivers. They aren't interested in being the agricultural producers for Iraq, cut off from the oil and the ocean.

I'm curious - I haven't really heard a lot about the sort of infrastructure that the US military is putting into place in Iraq (aside from human interest stories about waterways and such.) I don't know if you've ever been to Ramstein or Okinawa (I haven't, but you can see pictures online) or any of the other large military installations built in Germany or Japan, but have you seen the sort of large-scale construction that would lead to eventually lead to facilities like those in Iraq? Establishing Iraq as a friendly staging ground for future conflicts in the region was never really mentioned by proponents of or opponents to the war, but I guess I wouldn't rule it out as something the government or the military might be interested in.

Before the war even began I thought that this was all just a ploy to create a convient staging ground to intimidate, and then if necessary, take out Iran.

The only good thing to come out of the Iraqi mess is the discrediting of the neo-conservative movement. I hope the American people remember that when they choose their next president, but I have the sinking feeling they'll have a collective short memory.

What is this "choosing" of our next president you speak of?

Oh, man, I hope it's not Sanjaya! I hate that guy!

plz text "presidental option #3' to 43023

I don't know if the idea was to establish it as a strategic military staging ground so much as sort of tipping the first domino of moderate democratic governing in the region as a way to prevent future conflicts. A sort of pre emptive strike before a middle eastern based world war starts.
Though, that was just my impression based on things Bush has said and the way we conducted ourselves.

I've read, here and there, that the United States is constructing permanent bases, and that it was a part of the plan from the beginning (which isn't inconsistent with expecting to be greeted as liberators and generating a democratic domino effect, at all - quite the contrary, in fact). And even though there's no official policy for establishing permanent bases, construction work remains ongiong.

Hmmmmmm, I guess we'll have to stay, and while we're there lets tap the oil!!

What's wrong is getting the heck out and have em kill themselves while we all pretend not to know ? Wouldn't be the first time we look away

To do that, George Bush would have to admit that he was wrong. That's not likely to happen. Ever.

Seriously--didn't you all hear about the 14 permanent bases Halliburton was contracted to build in 2004? As to why the "reconstruction" of stuff like schools and sewers never happened, I think the fact that much of that work was farmed out to private contractors who had greased political pawns has at least something to do with it. Remember all those contractor scandals that went nowhere?

How relevant is Maliki anyways?

He's the head of an ineffectual government. The only reason he ever gained control of said government was because he had the backing of Moqtada al-Sadr. Note that that's past tense. Monday, al-Sadr pulled his six ministers from Maliki's government. I'd have to do some digging on Iraq's constitution, I suppose, but that doesn't suggest that Maliki's government is likely to survive the next election, assuming there isn't a vote-of-confidence mechanism to force an early election like you'd typically see in a European constitutional democracy.

So, American forces are going to sit in Iraq and do... what, exactly? They seem unable to remove the bad guys themselves, so it's already a given that they can't train the locals to do it. Perhaps it's time Bush admitted he invaded and conqoured Iraq, and doesn't intend to remove the occupation force, because there's no other way to ensure the oil will continue to flow west.

Except he won't, of course.

As an avid non-motorist who wouldn't mind seeing less cars across the world, I remain a firm propponent for the "seal them all in and let them kill each other" plan.