On NPR this morning, there were two consecutive stories that illustrated the bind we are in when it comes to the Iraq war. The first story was a report by an NPR correspondent from the Shia dominated areas south of Baghdad. Despite the anchor's attempts to elicit support for the idea that the military has been slanting the news to make al Qaeda appear more prominent in the battle space, the correspondent reported that al Qaeda may be numerically smaller than the Shia militias or the ex-Baathists, but that they are the most professional of the enemies and produce the most lethal car bombs. He also reported that they are intermingled within the population of the area.
The second story was an interview with Senator Jack Reed (D- Rhode Island) in which Senator Reed offered what passes for the current state of the art thinking about Iraq in the Democratic party and growing swaths of the Republican party. He was pleased with his plan which has been proposed in the Senate for current deliberation, to immediately change the military mission to force protection, training Iraqi troops, and targeting al Qaeda. To this end, he suggested we could begin to withdraw most of our troops, abandon the current position of the troops in the middle of the sectarian violence, and use Special Forces to hunt down and kill al Qaeda.
Listening to the learned Senator from Rhode Island, it was difficult to determine if he had actually given any thought to this plan, if he knows anything about counterinsurgency, if he understands anything about our enemies, or if he actually believes what he says.
I don't expect much from our Congressmen and women. They have very narrow definitions of success and failure in terms of policy. Success is getting re-elected and failure is losing their jobs. I can accept this as simply an unfortunate side effect of our system of governance. Generally, during war time, our expectations of our Representatives increases marginally, but after four difficult years in Iraq, it is only to be expected that their natural tendencies to want to maximize their electoral prospects should reassert themselves. I do not know Senator Reed; I have enough difficulty tolerating the ubiquitous pomposity of my local Senators, but I must say that the current anti-war planning lacks anything resembling coherence, and that does present problems.
There can be little doubt that American troops will begin withdrawing from Iraq in the spring of next year. If the surge is successful, such withdrawal will follow naturally from the efforts of our military men and women to marginalize and destroy al Qaeda's capabilities, while keeping the sectarian strife within reasonable limits.
This result, while not inconceivable, must be considered to be unlikely.
The most likely outcome is that the situation this fall will remain inconclusive, especially because as long as the enemy can kill innocents, set off car bombs, and IEDs on any kind of regular basis, our MSM will leverage our enemy's "successes" into supporting their meme that the war is already lost or at the least unwinnable. As a result, by the spring, the rush to the exits will become a torrent.
The idea that is now being bruited about that we can withdraw form the field, and from a distance use our Special Forces to take care of al Qaeda, is either a flimsy rationale used to cover the fact that our Senators are proposing we surrender the fight or a sign of magical thinking that is disturbing in its implications.
Our military, including our Special Forces, have done an incredible job in Iraq, in conditions that have been extremely inhospitable, conditions compounded by the confused and often contradictory strategies that they have been responsible for carrying out. Yet to think that we can somehow identify enemies, obtain actionable intelligence, and then slip in to kill our foes is to imagine our Special Forces as being nothing less than the kinds of magical Ninjas imagined in children's cartoons. Only magical Ninjas can wear blind folds and still slay their opponents.
I have no particularly knowledge about our Special Forces. I am in awe of their abilities and their strength of purpose and mind, yet to imagine they could function in the kind of environment that will ensue upon our departure from the battle space in Iraq is breathtakingly irresponsible. For a Senator, especially one who touts his experience on the Senate Armed Services Committee, to suggest this approach is troubling.
We are now one month into the surge. If it succeeds we will have won a major victory in the world wide battle against Islamic extremism. Even if the odds seem stacked against us, once the Senate approved General Petreaus unanimously, they were committed to allowing him to make the attempt. If the surge is failing he will tell us, in September, that the surge is failing. To attempt to declare defeat now is contemptible behavior, and Senator Reed and his colleagues deserve nothing but contempt for their elevation of their own short term political needs above the needs of the country.
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