20,000

[sleigh]

I truly don't know what is the best strategy for Iraq. Obviously, that makes me very much like a Democrat.

We shouldn't have gone in there in the first place. In retrospect, George Senior is looking like a friggin' genius in the first Gulf War for chasing Saddam's troops out of Kuwait and halfway to Baghdad, then pulling back without taking Saddam down and thus keeping Iraq stable.

None of the options are good, for one side or the other or both. Pulling out entirely is good for us in the short run, but what happens when Iraq falls apart? -- because it would. What goes into the vacuum we've created? I suspect we'd end up with a violent partitioning of the country, with the Kurds forming their own enclave in the north near Turkey (which will piss off Turkey mightily), the Shia forming their own country below Iran with Iran's help, and Saudi Arabia allying with the Sunni minority to hold some of the south. It would be a terrific, bloody mess, but hey, it wouldn't be American soldiers dying in the morass...

King George believes that after all the failed strategies he's employed before, this one will somehow magically work. I don't believe that either. I was curious and looked up a few figures. In the wake of WWII, we occupied Japan. In that occupation, in 1946 we had in excess of 400,000 troops there. According to GlobalSecurity.org, as of Mid-November, 2006, 152,000 US troops were in Iraq. Japan covers 145,883 square miles; Iraq covers 169,243 square miles -- so, in a militarily-defeated country that is (roughly) 16% larger than Japan, we have only 26% of the troops that we used for the occupation of Japan.

Yes, I know Japan is not Iraq (especially culturally) and this was a different war and a different time. The analogy is imperfect and maybe even wrong. But... we put close to half a million troops into Japan to make certain it was stable and safe -- in a culture, I would argue, where shame and honor are strong emotions, and where as a result there was far less danger of an 'insurgency.' I suspect that anyone who knew the Middle East at all expected that once Saddam was gone that a civil war would erupt -- and that if we were to control it, then we needed one hell of a lot more boots on the ground.

Another 20,000 troops won't do it. It's throwing a bucket of water on a raging house fire. Here's what I suspect will happen if we follow through on this: 1) we will be saying to those factions who already hate us that yes, we really are an Occupation Force; 2) the violence will escalate; 3) we still won't have enough troops on the ground to control the escalation, and the Iraqi forces will be next to useless; 4) we'll end up losing more of our soldiers; 5) we'll be hearing a speech in a year or so saying "Well, that didn't work either, but now I have a better plan..."

And we're leaving aside the issue of Afghanistan, which is increasingly looking as if it needs some propping up as well.

Doubling the forces in Iraq might do something about stopping the violence, but then there's still the whole panoply of Sunni/Shia/Kurd problems, and those will need to be addressed before Iraq can ever be stable again. But we don't have another 150,000 troops to throw at Iraq -- not without a draft... and I, for one, certainly don't want that again.

We broke Iraq. It's really, really broken. And looking at the pieces, I'm not convinced it's fixable. And if that's really, truly the case, then I would make the reluctant decision to say let's get our people out of there while we can...

Anybody got a better idea?

Comments

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

This sums up a lot of what I've been struggling with. Mistake or not, we as a country went over and broke Iraq. We're responsible, and I think we should do whatever we can to fix it. But then the question becomes, what would work, and is it still possible to repair what we broke. And I don't know ... I really don't like the idea of just washing our hands of the whole mess, but at the same time, I don't see anything that convinces me we're close to any real improvements, either.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

The problem I see with pulling out is that the country will not magically fix itself when we leave, nor any time in the foreseeable future. We are still dealing with anger and violence stemming from the handling of Palestine post-WWII. As well as the reconstructions of Germany and Japan went, the establishment of Israel was bungled when Palestinians were ejected from their homes and land. (Sorry if this is an inflammatory opinion. It's the truth as well as I've been able to figure it out. If you want to disagree with me, feel free to email privately. I don't want to start a flame war over Israel in sleigh's LJ, just grabbing at the nearest historical analogy for a bad mistake that reverberates down the generations.) If we leave Iraq, it *will* be taken over by Islamic extremists, it *will* become a chaotic and violent and unstable state, and we will be fighting future wars to try to clean up the mess we made. (And we will see further attacks on American soil, as al qaeda follows us home to continue the fight.) I really think it would be a mistake to pull out, now. I also think that staying in Iraq, or increasing troops, is going to be a miserable slog with no end in the foreseeable future, but I tend to believe that we have to follow through. It no longer seems as if our presence there is inciting violence. It seems as if our presence is suppressing what would could easily become a civil war all over the country. (The north and south are relatively quiet right now.) It is very sad that American troops are being lost, but it's also sad that innocent Iraqi civilians are dying in such numbers. It almost seems cowardly to abandon them to this war that they do not want.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

"...the establishment of Israel was bungled when Palestinians were ejected from their homes and land."

Overall, I'd agree with that statement. The consequences of the establishment of Israel continue to reverberate to this day. I'm not saying that creating a Jewish state was wrong, only that 'mistakes were made' during its creation that still echo.

As I suspect there will be echoes from this current mess for decades...

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Yes. Agreed on both counts. I would like to read up on the history of Isreal, because I feel sadly ill informed, but it has been explained to me that there was some injustice and unfairness in the establishment of the Jewish state, which was a good and honorable effort otherwise.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Like you, I agreed with Colin Powell when he said, early on, "If we break it, we're responsible for fixing it." To me, that was the primary argument for not going to war in the first place. For good or ill, we had a stable Iraq under Saddam, and Saddam was never a direct threat to us. Never. He was a horrible despot and yes, he was slaughtering those he considered enemies, but he wasn't going to bring his army to our shores, nor was he ever going to allow al Queda into his country.

But we took him out, we broke the country, and I don't know if we have the ability to glue it back together again. I certainly don't think the current Iraqi government has that capability.

It's a worse morass than Vietnam, and potentially far more dangerous.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Saddam was a serious threat to our allies in the region, though, and as far as I can tell, he did not make any special effort to keep al qaeda out, either. He largely suffered from the delusion that we were more or less on his side against Iran, which is the only reason he wasn't a larger threat. He was a great deal of trouble to us, though, during the decade plus that we patrolled the Iraqi no-fly zone and attempted to inspect his WMD sites. In retrospect, it looks like invading was probably not justified, but the fact that he didn't have WMD's and was only bluffing was a large piece of info we were missing.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

"...he did not make any special effort to keep al qaeda out."

From everything I've read, he actually did make that effort. Even though both Saddam was Sunni and Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization, Saddam was fairly 'secular' and Al Qaeda's philosophy is more 'fundamentalist' that Saddam's. From everything I've read, Saddam considered Al Qaeda a threat and actively kept them out of Iraq.

I also don't believe that we were entirely missing the lack of WMDs. From appearances, the administration was only listening to those who would tell them what they wanted to hear. There were plenty of voices saying the opposite, but they were actively ignored.

[ckd]

Part of the problem is that we were on his side against Iran, though.

"What if" scenarios don't fix the mess we're in, but imagine this:

Saddam invades Iran. The US response: "while we still blame Iran for violating diplomatic immunity in the Iran Hostage Crisis, we do not condone invasion and are asking the UN Security Council to address this immediately."

This doesn't lead to rapproachment with Iran, but it does give us some level of credibility in terms of principled behavior even when it's effectively assistance to a declared enemy.

Stuff happens (perhaps UN pressure, embargoes, etc; more likely the Soviets veto any move, but at least we come out with better PR). Whatever happens, Saddam doesn't take our past performance as an indication that we tacitly approve of him invading other countries (and, one hopes, April Glaspie is somewhere else). This either prevents the invasion of Kuwait, or sets a better precedent for our response being more widely accepted.

End result: with luck, no invasion. With less luck, an invasion but a more multinational response. In the latter case, the follow-on protection of Saudi Arabia to be done by troops from the Arab League, or Indonesia, or somewhere other than the US (even if it's only "tripwire" protection).

No US troops in Saudi Arabia means less support/justification for radical Islamic worldviews being used to recruit or support terrorists, and if we're really really lucky, that means there are several buildings in Lower Manhattan that haven't gone anywhere.

Wishful thinking, sigh....