Friday, February 27, 2009

Withdrawing From Iraq

President Obama gave a speech today, detailing his plans for withdrawing from Iraq. Our force level will be reduced to 35-50,000 by August 2010, and the rest will be removed by December 2011, as specified in the status-of-forces agreement that the Bush administration signed with Iraq. I have a couple of thoughts on the whole situation.

The time does appear right to start pulling troops from Iraq. Things are probably about as stable as they are going to get any time in the near future. We don't need to have the bulk of our ground combat power tied down in Iraq indefinitely, and there are the obvious financial considerations. On the other hand, I think the total withdrawal scheduled for 2011 is a bad idea, and I'm skeptical that it will actually happen. I'll be surprised if we don't retain some forces in the country. Given the expenditure of life, money and time in Iraq, we have a vested interest in it. I would prefer to see a situation where we kept a relatively small but significant military presence in Iraq as a threat to Iran, as a prop to the Iraqi government, and as a lever to exert influence over the country. We'll see what happens after we cut our force level. Obviously if the Iraqis don't want us there at all, we need to leave. But I don't think total withdrawal is the best option.

2 comments:

  1. As you know I'm a newish reader so I don't know the history of your position, but neoconish rightists have been saying things like "the time does not appear right to start pulling troops from Iraq" for quite a few years now.

    Obviously the case that we never should have gone in there to begin with is very compelling, and obviously we made many blunders that made the situation worse than it should have been. But it's also clear to most of us that we never should have stayed as long as we did.

    I'd say withdrawal by 2011 is at least five years to late; It should have begun in 2005 at the latest.

    Of course Afghanistan is where troops should have been, yet we blew that too. I don't know whether Obama's 17,000 will help at this point, but within a year it may be time to stop pretending Afghanistan is a viable state.

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  2. True, but the situation has changed significantly over the past couple of years.

    "But it's also clear to most of us that we never should have stayed as long as we did."

    I don't think that's clear at all, given the way the Bush administration handled things. They screwed up so badly that we were backed into a corner and forced to stay -- rather than suffer a massive defeat and leave Iraq to collapse into civil war.

    "I'd say withdrawal by 2011 is at least five years to late; It should have begun in 2005 at the latest."

    I thought we should have been in and out much faster too, but that would have required an entirely different sequence of events.

    "Of course Afghanistan is where troops should have been"

    I disagree with that because I don't think we should have undertaken a nation-building project there. I think that the administration's original minimal force strategy combined with local elements was exactly the right way to go in Afghanistan. The problems came from the fact that their grandiose goals could not be accomplished with that sort of force level.

    "but within a year it may be time to stop pretending Afghanistan is a viable state."

    I think we can stop pretending that right now. I hope our increased force level in Afghanistan leads to some sort of miraculous turnaround, but I'm not holding my breath.

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