Iraq War: No good options

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

One positive turn in the discussion and debate over the Iraq War is that we're seeing some serious discussion of exit strategies now.  In one way, it's an odd discussion, since the Bush administration shows no evident signs of an desire for an exit strategy.  Or the ability to pull one off.

But the discussion is valuable for more than one reason.  As unlikely as it seems now, there is even a real possibility that before he leaves office, political and military conditions at home and abroad could lead even George Bush to make a serious change of direction on the Iraq War.

Ron Hutcheson of Knight-Ridder has recently done a good news summary of the discussion: Experts: No good options for Iraq 07/ 07/05 .

He opens by writing, "In the swirling debate over Iraq, all sides agree on one thing: There's no easy way out."  While he probably correct on what the experts are saying, it's also somewhat misleading.  Getting into a war like this one is much easier than getting out.  And the US can't just decide to pull out 139,000 troops and put them on planes the next day and send them all over the border to Kuwait.

But "easy" is a relative term.  The United States could certainly declare an exit strategy that could be implemented unilaterally.  What it can't do is to make either continuing the war or pulling out risk-free.  As Hutcheson makes a very important point (my emphasis):

Every approach to ending U.S. involvement carries the risk that President Bush's ambitious effort to transplant democracy will end in chaos and create an oil-rich haven for terrorists. Even the most hopeful predictions envision a fragile democracy struggling to overcome ruthless insurgentsand divisive internal tensions.

Hutcheson breaks the current proposals into four groups: rapid withdrawal; gradual withdrawal; more troops; and, stay the course.

I was interested in his quotations from Anthony Cordesman, who I have also frequently quoted here at Old Hickory's Weblog.  Cordesman, he points out, supports the basic Bush strategy, but is also realistic enough to recognize that there have been and are some very serious problems that are not being acknowledged or possibly even recognized by administration.

What he writes here is true for Cordesman:

Advocates of other strategies, including those who think Bush is on the right track, acknowledge risks in their choices as well.

But he generalizes too much here.  The official Republican Party line, as provided by administration spokespeople, FOX News and OxyContin radio, is to minimize any risks in the current direction of the war. Which makes it all the more interesting that he is so critical of so many aspects of how the Bush administration has handled the war.  He certainly doesn't toe the Republican Party's Patriotically Correct line on the war.

Here are his quotations from Cordesman:

"There are going to be thousands more casualties and we're going to spend $4 billion to $8 billion a month for some time to come," said national security expert Anthony Cordesman, who backs Bush's plan but accuses the president of downplaying the human and financial toll. "It's going to take years." ...

Opponents of a rapid withdrawal say that the departure of U.S. troops would doom Iraq to chaos, with dangerous long-term consequences.

"You'd have a messy civil war and almost certainly another dictator," said Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative think tank.

A power vacuum in Iraq might also invite meddling by Iraq's neighbors, especially Iran and Turkey. Iran has close ties to Iraqi Shiites, and Turkey wants to stamp out any move toward Kurdish self-rule in Iraq that could stir up Turkish Kurds. ...

Cordesman, a stay-the-course advocate, questioned whether a timetable [for US withdrawal] would offer any additional incentive for Iraqi security forces.

"They're already being pushed as hard as they can," he said.

My own view at this point is that some sort of sooner-rather-than-later withdrawal plan with an established deadline announced is the least bad out of a set of bad options at this point.  But I also think it's important to try being as realistic as possible about the implications and risks that any approach entails.  One of the biggest problems for the US in the last 20 years turns out to have been not recognizing the potential downside of nurturing the jihadist movement in Afghanistan as an anti-Soviet policy.

I also think this following observation is important.  To achieve a successful counterinsurgency - which is at least theoretically possible - will require some real sacrifice, including even some from affluent Republicans not now asked to contribute more to the war effort than cheering for Bush's policies while they spend their tax cuts:

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said the government would probably have to revive the draft to come up with the 500,000 troops that he estimates it would take to secure Iraq. Bush and Rumsfeld have ruled out that option.

There are some additional links on the topic at the end of Hutcheson's article.