Urban journal
For many of us, this is traditionally a season of hope. I’m
having trouble finding any, though, given the escalating tragedy in Iraq.
There certainly isn’t much hope to be found in the report by
the Iraq Study Group. The report calls for diplomacy, and James Baker, the
group’s co-chair, says we must talk to our enemies. As important as that is
even at this late date, it’s hard to picture Iran,
for one, being interested in constructive involvement.
Even the Study Group’s call for troop withdrawal offers little
hope. The Group wants us to change the focus from fighting to training and
protecting. It wants us to “significantly increase the number of US military
personnel, including combat troops, embedded in and supporting Iraqi Army units.”
As that happens, the report suggests, we should start pulling other combat
troops out of Iraq, so that in just over a year, “subject to unexpected
developments,” all troops not involved in training or protecting Iraqi troops
could be withdrawn.
The military is already planning to embed more of our troops
in Iraqi units, in fact. But an article in the Washington Post on Sunday said
the program is considered a “high-risk assignment” for the soldiers who’ll be
embedded.
“The concept is considered so dangerous,” said the Post
article, “that a group of potential replacements stand ready at Fort Riley, the
US Army base directing the program, for immediate shipment to Iraq if members
of a deployed team are killed or wounded, Major General Carter F. Ham, who runs
the training program, told House members last week.”
In the New York Times on Sunday, Andrew Exum, a former Army
Ranger in Iraq,
warned against increasing the number of American advisers and cutting the
number of fighting troops. “The adviser teams embedded with Iraqi units will
become increasingly vulnerable,” he wrote, “and a smaller force left behind in Iraq
will find itself called upon to fight the inevitable worsening of violence with
far fewer troops.”
Nor will this training and protecting be quick. Spencer
Ackerman of the American Prospect magazine says he asked former Attorney
General Edwin Meese, who was a Study Group member, how many troops we’ll need. His
response, writes Ackerman, was that “it would necessitate ‘a considerable
force’ for logistics, training, force protection, and special operations.”
And so, if the Bush administration follows the advice of the
Study Group, we’ll change course, but we’ll continue to bleed for what Ed Meese
portrays as a “sustained period of time.”
Well, all that’s
beside the point anyway. The Study Group report will have no effect on the
Bush administration. The president still clings to the vision that the US
can win in Iraq
and that he’ll democratize the Middle East.
Meantime, the car bombings, the kidnappings, the torture, the
beheadings, go on.
“If the situation continues to deteriorate,” warns the Iraq
Study Group, “the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could
trigger the collapse of Iraq’s
government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could
intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda
victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United
States could be diminished. Americans could
become more polarized.”
And Carnegie Endowment scholar David Rothkopf cautions
against thinking in terms of a single country. Writing in Sunday’s Washington
Post, Rothkopf spelled out the larger threats we face: “Iran’s acquisition of
nuclear technology; a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan; increasing
anti-American radicalism across the Muslim world and the threat that such
passions pose to moderate leaders atop potentially fragile regimes in Egypt,
Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia; and Washington’s growing alienation from
allies who would normally share US interests.”
The US
invasion of Iraq,
noted Rothkopf, has made all of those problems worse.
On Monday, the
Wall Street Journal reported that despite its enormous budget, the Army is
dangerously short of money for military equipment and “key personnel.”
And what if we need military troops to serve somewhere else?
What if another country explodes into civil war? What if there’s another terrorist
attack in the US?
What if there’s another hurricane like Katrina?
Numerous military leaders have made it clear: We do not have
any more troops.
How many more Iraqis, Afghanis, and American and coalition
troops will die? What dangers are we exposing ourselves to? What needs at home
are going unmet?
And how long will this go on?
The Times’ Frank Rich reminds us that in the Vietnam War —
even after Lyndon Johnson replaced Robert McNamara as defense secretary, after
public sentiment had turned sharply against the war and allies were backing
away, after a study recommended that we draw down our own troops and train the
South Vietnamese, the war dragged on for five more years. And in those five
years, more Americans were killed than had died in the earlier stage of the
war.
And, David Rothkopf warned in his Washington Post article on
Sunday, it’s likely to be much harder to leave Iraq
than it was to leave Vietnam.
Whenever we leave — and at some time we will leave — there
will be chaos and pain. I don’t find much hope in the Iraq Study Group’s
report. I don’t find much hope in anything about Iraq
right now. The best I can do is hope we leave as soon as possible, to limit the
chaos and pain.
And you? What are your thoughts?
Leave now? Stay the course? Follow the Study Group’s advice? Send us your
comments: themail@rochester-citynews.com; or, by land, The Mail, City
Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2006.
