[Mb-civic] Why We Should Leave By Brian Katulis The San Jose Mercury News

[Michael Butler]

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    Why We Should Leave
    By Brian Katulis
    The San Jose Mercury News

    Sunday 19 March 2006

    The gruesome discovery of dozens of men found shot to death
execution-style last week provided more evidence that on the eve of the
third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the country teeters on the brink
of an all-out sectarian civil war.

    Gen. John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, recently
told a Senate committee that sectarian violence was now becoming a greater
security concern than the bloody Sunni-led insurgency that has claimed
thousands of American and Iraqi lives. And in a speech Monday, President
Bush made reference twice to various groups' attempts to ignite a civil war
among Iraq's fractious Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

    But even as the president suggested that the facts on the ground were
changing, he offered no change in US strategy. "We will not lose our nerve,"
Bush declared, reaffirming his "stay the course" posture.

    Abizaid did tell reporters Thursday that the United States was still
planning on reducing the number of US troops in Iraq if the battling
factions manage to form a unity government. But he did not give any
specifics on how many troops could leave, nor has the administration set any
timeline for withdrawal.

    But keeping US troops indefinitely in Iraq will do nothing to calm
growing tensions between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites, who are by far the
largest group in the country and in the government. That anger has only
worsened as some Sunnis waged an insurgency to try to retake control of the
country they ran for decades and, more recently, as Shiite-dominated police
and military have been accused of torturing Sunnis and operating death
squads.

    No good military options exist. What is needed is a political deal, a
power-sharing compromise devised by elected Iraqi leaders. Without a deal
that equitably divides Iraq's oil wealth and gives all the major political
factions a stake in the new federal government, Iraqis will have little
incentive to build a unified state.

    One effective way to get all sides to make a deal is to say we're going
to leave Iraq - and set a timetable for doing so.

    Such a plan has three other major advantages. It will take the strain
off our ground forces, which have been pushed to the breaking point. It will
allow the United States to redeploy many of the troops stationed in Iraq to
long-neglected hot spots in the war on terror. And it will deprive
terrorists worldwide of a rallying cry against the United States, which they
have portrayed as an occupation force in a Muslim-majority country.

    At the center of America's Iraq debate is what to do about US troops.
Some leaders, such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., argue that the United
States should send more troops. But "extra" troops do not exist; the US Army
has been stretched thin by three years of continuous deployment in Iraq. And
increasing US troop presence would further inflame a precarious situation in
Iraq by feeding perceptions of occupation; nearly all Iraqis reject US troop
increases. The American people also do not support this option: Only one in
10 favor increasing troops.

    President Bush espouses linking troop withdrawals with conditions in
Iraq, a position also vocally endorsed by Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., among
others. But this is a recipe for quagmire. Conditions do not have a chance
of improving until Iraqis understand that the US military is not planning to
serve as a crutch indefinitely.

    Some policy analysts have proposed keeping the troop levels the same but
using them differently. One proposal - by Stephen Biddle at the Council on
Foreign Relations - would have the United States pick sides and use its
military power to force a political solution. That proposal, explained in
the accompanying article, is almost certain to fail, as have other US
attempts to micromanage Iraq's opaque politics over the last three years.

    The reality is that the US military is neither inclined nor qualified to
meddle deeply in Iraqi politics; it does not have enough people who speak
Arabic and understand Iraqi politics and culture.

    Some want out now

    Still others - Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. among them - have argued for a
rapid withdrawal. But a precipitous departure risks all-out civil war that
could draw in Iraq's neighbors and close off any possibility for Iraqi
security forces - which now number more than 240,000 - to stand on their
own.

    There are two key problems with America's current debate on Iraq. First,
it is narrowly focused on the troops, ignoring the fact that the diplomatic
and economic levers the United States has at its disposal will have a
greater chance of stabilizing Iraq. Second, it fails to examine Iraq in the
broader context of the global threats the United States faces.

    The best alternative is a balanced plan named strategic redeployment,
which calls for a gradual drawdown of US forces from Iraq over the next two
years and which has the backing of former Senate leader Tom Daschle of South
Dakota and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

    The plan began circulating in Washington in September after Lawrence
Korb, a former Reagan administration assistant defense secretary, and I
published a paper on it at the Center for American Progress, a Washington
think tank.

    The proposal says the United States should draw down its troop presence
from its present level of 136,000 to 60,000 by the end of the year, and to
virtually zero by the end of 2007. It also encourages more vigorous
diplomacy in the region and in Iraq, to bring the country's factions
together, and redeploys some of the troops leaving Iraq to other countries
where anti-American terrorists appear to be gaining footholds.

    The gradual drawdown would allow US troops to continue providing crucial
support to the nascent Iraqi security forces. (The performance of Iraqi
security forces, while it has not met expectations, has by most accounts
improved.) But the plan also clears the way for a political solution and
recognizes that current troop levels are unsustainable without a draft.

    Army needs relief

    It has become clear that if we still have more than 130,000 ground
soldiers in Iraq a year from now, we will destroy the all-volunteer Army.
Keeping such a large contingent of troops there will require the Pentagon to
send many units back to Iraq for a third time and to activate reserve and
Guard forces a second or third time. To paraphrase Vietnam-era Army Gen.
Maxwell Taylor, while we sent the Army to Iraq to save Iraq, we now have to
redeploy the Army to save the Army.

    Under strategic redeployment, all Guard and reserve troops would be
demobilized and would immediately return to the United States. This would
allow the Guard and reserve to return to their policies of troops not
spending more than one year out of five on active duty and let the Guard
focus on shoring up gaps in homeland security.

    Approximately 20,000 soldiers would be sent this year to bolster US and
NATO efforts in Afghanistan and support counterterrorist operations in
Africa and Asia. In Afghanistan, more troops are urgently needed to beat
back the resurging Taliban forces and to maintain security throughout the
country. In the Horn of Africa, countries like Somalia remain a breeding
ground for terrorists.

    Another 14,000 of the soldiers serving in Iraq would be positioned
nearby in Kuwait starting this year. Along with a Marine expeditionary force
located offshore in the Persian Gulf, these "over the horizon" forces would
be well-positioned to strike at any terrorist camps in Iraq and guard
against any major acts that risk further destabilizing the region, such as
an incursion of conventional forces from Turkey or Iran into Iraq.

    Even with all those redeployments, the number of soldiers deployed
overseas in the war on terror would drop by more than 40,000 in the first
year. This would enable the Army and Marines to return to the time-tested
policy of allowing a soldier or Marine to spend at least two months at home
for every month deployed abroad.

    The key to strategic redeployment is that it acknowledges up front that
Iraq's problems cannot be solved by American boots on the ground. A
timetable for withdrawal will spur Iraq's battling factions to try harder to
reach a compromise before US troops leave. But US leaders should also
actively work to help Iraqi leaders negotiate and to draw in leaders from
the region.

    The redeployment of US forces from Iraq requires that Iraq's neighbors
play a more active role in supporting Iraq's stability and reconstruction.
Iraq's neighbors have a better chance of persuading recalcitrant Iraqis to
compromise than we do. It was, after all, regional diplomacy and engagement
that put an end to Lebanon's civil war. Thursday's announcement that Iran
and the United States had agreed to hold talks on how to halt Iraq's
sectarian violence was welcome news.

    Bold action needed

    Until our leaders take more bold steps to motivate others to provide
help, our troops are likely to find themselves increasingly in the
cross-fire of sectarian and ethnic conflict. In that case, the United States
may end up exacerbating the tensions Gen. Abizaid is worried about and may
be forced to choose sides in what may be an emerging full-blown sectarian
civil war.

    Not setting a timeline holds the United States hostage to terrorists and
cynical Iraqi politicians like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who blamed the United
States for the recent Sunni-Shiite violence. Americans, in the end, will be
safer if our Army is rested and ready to take on necessary assignments, if
our National Guard and reserve are home to respond to terrorism or other
disasters and if terrorists can no longer use Iraq as a recruiting tool. The
time has come for decisive action to put the United States back in charge of
its national security.

    Brian Katulis is director of democracy and public diplomacy on the
National Security Team at the Center for American Progress.