Iraq: how to withdraw - or not

Securing the street after a raid/gunfight with insurgents, Baghdad, Sep 2006

This is in response to a question my father asked me, and it's a good question. Is Sen. Barack Obama's plan for withdrawal from Iraq feasible? Here is his official position:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

Hillary Clinton's plan is slightly more vague, but it is actually very similar:

The most important part of Hillary's plan is the first: to end our military engagement in Iraq's civil war and immediately start bringing our troops home. As president, one of Hillary's first official actions would be to convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, her Secretary of Defense, and her National Security Council. She would direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home starting with the first 60 days of her Administration.

Are these realistic?

Before I answer, here is a copy of a letter that was posted on Andrew Sullivan's blog in reference to criticism over McCain's stance that we shouldn't have a timetable for withdrawal:

Look, Obama has hitched his wagon to the Maneuver A Brigade Out Every Two Months schedule that is supposed to get us out over a period of 16 months. If I’m Al Qaeda and the Iranians, I ramp up my bombings and attacks on the Americans while they are withdrawing to make my Muslim audience think that the Americans are withdrawing under fire. This is Bo-Peep Warmaking and McCain is right to call the Young Lad on it.

McCain gets this. Obama doesn’t. Or, at least, he does intellectually but he isn’t telling his base voters the truth: once he is elected he will be forced by events to adopt Bush’s surge policy. Hand it to McCain-he the one who is being honest about what will have to be a protracted, painful withdraw. Barack is still peddling candy to his base voters.

Andrew's response is:

seems stupid to me to hinge our strategy on how al Qaeda will spin it. However we withdraw from Iraq - and McCain wants us to withdraw as much as Obama - al Qaeda will say it's a victory for them. What really matters is whether it is a victory for them

Well, I mostly agree with the letter writer, although it's a toss up whether the insurgents would step up attacks against coalition forces; certainly some more cautious elements want to see us gone and wouldn't want to risk the US changing its mind.

But what is certain is that there would be a bloodbath; more so than Al-Qaeda realizes. If the US pulls out too quickly, there will be Shia-Sunni violence like never before, and Al-Qaeda, along with other Sunni militias might suddenly realize just how outnumbered they are, once the Iranian-backed Shia militias (who dominate the Iraqi military) feel free to turn their guns on Sunnis again. Unfortunately, the real losers would mostly be ordinary Sunnis killed and driven from their neighborhoods instead of Al-Qaeda. If you doubt this, you can just recall what happened after Yugoslavia broke up, or in the chaos that ensued after we experimented with giving Fallujah back to the Iraqis in 2004.

So what is the best way to withdraw then? After all, we won't be there forever. There's no magic number; it depends entirely on the situation at that time. But the general rule is that it would have be slowly, and with plenty of observation as well as feedback from the Iraqi government. Most importantly, we would need to maintain a great deal of flexibility, so that if the situation is going to hell in a handbasket we can reverse the withdrawal if we have to. Problem is, it looks like some of the prospective political candidates are painting themselves into a corner on this issue; even if you realize it was necessary, it would be very hard to send more troops back into Iraq if you've just spent the past year campaigning on the exact opposite position.

Two more considerations:

1) It's not just Americans there. If we leave, then I guarantee that all the other coalition partners will want to leave too, and most of them will want to go first. Some International Aid organizations may want to leave as well. The long, long, vast train of transports out of the country, by air and road, will be taxed to the limit.

2) Any forces that we leave in the region would have to take Iran into account. They have infiltrated the Iraqi government and insurgent groups at all levels already; after a US pullout they may become more bold with their territorial ambitions. Similarly, while it's our ally, Turkey may step up its offenses against the Kurdish regions and possibly stage an occupation of their own. How would we respond to something like that? These are questions that need to be considered beforehand.



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