Iraq exit a simple
alternative for US By Daniel Smith
This past week, both the US House of
Representatives and the Senate debated and voted
on legislation affecting the deployment of US
troops in Iraq. In the Senate, the issue was the
length of time soldiers and marines would have at
home between deployments to the war zones of Iraq
and Afghanistan.
In the House, Democrat
Ike Skelton introduced a bill requiring the
secretary of defense to begin withdrawing troops
from Iraq within
120
days of the legislation becoming law and complete
the drawdown to a "limited presence" - a
heretofore unknown parameter - by April 1, 2008.
While each of these pieces of legislation
would substantially change the current tactics and
missions of US forces, neither provides an answer
to three vital questions:
Will combat units configured as "quick
reaction" forces be positioned in Iraq, on its
periphery, or afloat in the Persian Gulf?
If combat units are kept in Iraq, how many
troops will remain, including combat support and
training cadre?
Where will these soldiers and civilian
personnel be located if they are based in Iraq?
The current legislation raises as many
questions as it answers. There is a simpler
alternative.
Current troop
levels With the 29,600 extra troops (21,500
combat and another 8,100 combat support) that
constitute the six month-old "surge", US military
strength in Iraq stands at about 160,000. It is
expected to stay at that level at least until
October 1, 2007, the start of the new fiscal year,
if not until next spring. The administration will
come under increasingly heavy pressure from its
congressional allies to "reduce" the total US
military presence in Iraq to its pre-surge total
of 130,000 or risk a political and electoral
firestorm in November 2008, when the next
presidential election takes place.
The
administration will likely announce the first
reductions between September 15 and October 1,
2007 - that is, between the date it must send
Congress a promised progress report by General
David Petraeus and the start of the new fiscal
year. Judging from the interim report released on
July 12 and defended by President George W Bush
during an hour-long press conference, the
mid-September report will be carefully parsed by
everyone: Democrats, Republicans, the press, and
perhaps the public as well.
Whatever the
details of the troop-drawdown announcement, there
will not likely be a firm date by which all combat
troops - let alone all military personnel other
than the normal Marine Corps contingent stationed
at US embassies - are withdrawn from Iraq. The
Pentagon will continue to pursue conflicting if
not contradictory mission(s), only with fewer
forces left "in-country".
In general
terms, the residual force will assume a
scaled-down version of missions assigned at one
time or another. These include: training Iraqi
army and police units; providing "force
protection" capabilities for US training personnel
and installations; helping seal Iraq's borders to
prevent arms and anti-US and anti-Iraqi-government
fighters from entering Iraq; and carrying the
fight to al-Qaeda in Iraq. There will also be one
new mission: providing a "quick reaction"
capability for Iraqi government forces as needed.
The proposed legislation contains all
sorts of caveats, exceptions and restrictions, all
of which the president can waive if he determines
them detrimental to national security. What
remains equally unclear is how reducing troop
levels by 30,000 or 50,000 or 80,000 will
substantially improve conditions in Iraq - the
administration's proclaimed objective for
continuing the occupation of the country. Even
with the current troop surge, violence overall has
not decreased. It has only shifted away from
Baghdad and al-Anbar province to other parts of
Iraq.
Fewer US troops on urban patrols
will produce fewer Iraqi and US fatalities.
Removing US troops from vehicular roadblocks and
checkpoints will save Iraqi lives (military
sources concede that US troops manning checkpoints
or running convoy duty killed or wounded 429
Iraqis in the past 12 months). But these steps
will not decrease the level of inter- and even
intra-sectarian and ethnic violence that now
ravages Iraq.
Another private
matter The proposed legislation also
doesn't clarify the role of the other
not-so-secret US army in Iraq: the private
contractors.
Even with the surge in
military troop strength to 160,000, the US, Iraqi
and other private contractors exceed at least by
20,000 those in uniform, according to US
government statistics. As reported by the Los
Angeles Times, a breakdown of the total shows
that, as of February, companies under US
government contracts and thereby financed by US
taxpayer dollars employed 21,000 US citizens,
43,000 foreign personnel, and 118,000 Iraqis. A
reduction in military personnel should translate
into reductions in the total number of contractors
needed to feed soldiers and clean and repair
bases, but just how many and from which category
will not be determined until the Pentagon decides
on redeployment.
The contractor picture is
further complicated by the presence of a large
number of individuals employed by private security
firms under contract to the United States. The
Pentagon estimates 6,000 such contractors, while
Central Command's database lists 10,800. Both
totals are well below the Private Security Company
Association of Iraq's figure of 30,000. Any
drawdown of US troop strength probably will not
affect private security contractors, many of whom
protect Iraqis or US executives living in or
visiting Iraq in connection with rebuilding its
infrastructure and institutions.
One sure
way to cut through all the ambiguities and
uncertainty would be to start withdrawing troops
no later than October 1, 2007, and simply keep
going until all US armed forces - combat, combat
support, and combat service support - have left
Iraq. This would enable the Iraqi government to
determine which US companies it wants to help
rebuild the country and how many US citizens it
allows within its borders. But until Baghdad gets
firm control over its economy - and no longer has
to deal with occupation conditions - it will
continue to struggle to achieve political
coherence among its many ethnic and sectarian
divisions and to re-emerge as a single sovereign
state.
US and coalition troops have little
or no effect on the levels of intra- and
inter-sectarian and ethnic violence, which are the
main impediments to the political, constitutional,
social and economic regeneration of Iraq as a
sovereign country. So there can be no reason for
keeping even a "limited presence" of foreign
military troops in Iraq.
The logic of the
remedy could not be clearer. The generals on the
ground in Baghdad and the politicians in
Washington admit that there is no military
solution to the Iraq imbroglio. This argues in and
of itself that there is no mission for US troops.
Without a mission, they should return home - no
ifs, ands, or buts.
Dan Smith is
a military-affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in
Focus, a retired US Army colonel, and a senior
fellow on military affairs at the Friends
Committee on National Legislation. His weblog is
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