Will Obama repeat Bush's big mistake in Iraq?

The Raimondo piece is blatantly manipulative and sarcastic. Putting it up as a 'straw fool' is not a fair presentation of the 'start out now' positions of folks like FP associate Marc Lynch. Read that carefully. When we START may be more important than a guess about when our last track clears the border.

Beyond Obama's clear promise to rapidly wind down the occupation, he inherits a SOFA/withdrawal agreement that W signed off on. The last admin grudgingly agreed to a clear instruction from the Iraq executive and legislature to begin leaving now: Be gone from the cities mid-summer 09, and all combat troops out in 16 months.

Even assuming that the 2010 Iraq govt is good with 40K US trainers in 2011, (Ricks points out those are combat troops too, and trainer casualties confirm that), pulling 100K out removes 7,000 a month for 15 months, starting in April. If we hold at 130K until after Ramadan and elections, we'll need to pull 10-11K/month, which no one is saying is safe, cost effective, or even doable.

Gen Odierno's valid opinion that they'll need us for another 10 years is going to run hard up against the fact that Maliki shored his flagging popularity by getting Team W to agree to withdraw. The SOFA difficulty in Parliament was that so many didn't even want to vote on any legitimizing instument. We're that popular. Most expect the SOFA to easily pass a public referendum. Any Iraq party that's too beholden to US occupation for stability likely will be tossed aside or violently challenged. Like Chalabi and Allawi.

What are the odds that some combination of Christian and secular Arabs, Kurds, or Sunni returnees will convince enough Shiites 'we need Americans, let's strtch the SOFA out another year or two? I suggest that becomes more possible if we begin to demonstrate willingness to abide by Bush's SOFA agreement. Yes it's risky, but it is bipartisan enough (negotiated under teh eye of Crocker and Petraeus) that Team Obama is not swinging in the breeze at the first glitch. Actively refusing to begin the pullout will re-invigorate those that believe driving the foreign devils out is the only path to sovereignty.

Let's say that Odierno is right, that conditions are not set for complying with SOFA, and Maliki or his successor doesn't seem willing to extend. Do we engineer a coup? Are we going over the heads of Baghdad to ask for popular referendum to stay, as Ron Paul once (ironically) suggested. Not likely we'd get that chance. What will Obama and Odierno's successor face in a circumstance where the minority asking us to stay are shooting at those demanding we live up to SOFA?

Compounding the SOFA deadline is that the 2007 'surge' had 'force reduction' built into it, because of the huge stress it placed on the US ground force. The surge period drained the better part of a division in direct casualties and KIA's. Nearly half those casualties are noncoms and officer, talent not replaceable thru new recruits. A quarter of the force in Iraq today is still serving 15 month tours.

With the 17,000 more being sent to Afghanistan we will have 200,000+ men deployed in both wars, more than at the peak of the surge. McKiernan is drumming his fingers for the strategic review to agree that he gets another 10,000, as per his 2008 needs. Even in the phased withdrawal that SOFA demands, our army is a full year away from BEGINNING a reset. That's what Casey and Pace knew in November 06.

In a room full of bad and worse choices, every option is high risk. Living up to our written SOFA word improves the prospects for strategic patience from our Iraqi partners, and maybe NATO too. We can't honor the spirit or letter of the SOFA without visibly edging for the door now. Let's suck it up, thank our hosts, and pay attention if anyone invites us to sit back down for tea, cakes and talk.

I'm impressed. From the excerpt in the Times, your book looks fascinating.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article5776368.ece

Sorry, Mr. Ricks, but the United States military has no legitimate business in Iraq to begin with. The war was an atrocity for which there is no adequate moral justification. It released still-unmeasured gushers of death, mutilation, pain and material loss into the world, and its perpetrators are criminals who should be locked up. If Obama is in danger of anything, it is the danger posed by the usual hazard befalling civilian leaders: the susceptibility to being dazzled and intimidated by pins and ribbons and medals, by square jaws, stiff postures and pompous bearings, and succumbing to the military predators who always want more, and who will never stop looking for ways of turning their botched and barbaric ultraviolent escapades into "wins", in the name of spurious and fantastic "national interests", interests that reside more in the reputations of the powerful than the well-being of the citizenry.

I support victory for the American people, not victory for the national security class who planned and executed this piece of barbarism. If the national security class suffers a humiliating loss, Americans as a whole will win. Our children now and in the future will be safer from their incessant predatory hunt for cannon fodder and tax dollars. Maybe Americans can finally pull the plug on the obese and sick national security leviathan that has swallowed this country, but represents a dying post-WWII and Clod War era.

Sorry Mr. Ricks but it seems abundantly clear that YOU are the one repeating Bush's mistake by staying there and throwing good lives and money after bad.

According to Joan Walsh, you yourself admit that the surge was a strategic failure. The war party has had more than its fair share of chances at achieving whatever their objective du jeur happens to be.

The Iraq War is an unjust and illegal war of aggression that was sold to the American people by means of a despicable WMD hoax. This unjust war has killed as many as a million Iraqis. That is quite a lot of dead people. Few tyrants can claim as many deaths. I'm not sure that even Saddam Hussein killed that many Iraqis.

You can pretend you want to stay there for their own good but the Iraqis say they want us out. In fact their democratically elected government -- remember all the purple fingers? -- already voted us out. Who are YOU to overrule THEM?

All that's left to do is figure out what our reparations bill is and get out in as orderly a fashion as possible. From the American perspective we already have the worst case scenario. We have replaced a secular, anti-Iranian, power-balancing regime with a bunch of religious fanatics who treat women like subhumans and will be a satellite of Iran. You can't unscrew that pooch.

If we want to help the Iraqis -- THE IRAQIS -- with police protection we can do that. We can provide air support and Special Operations forces where appropriate. We could even leave a small number of troops behind -- and I mean small.

But when one faction of your government unjustly attacks a country and a different faction takes over and the citizens of the victim country want you to leave, then the just thing for the new faction to do is leave.

We also can't afford it.

"Suppose you wanted to arrive at a specific location in Chicago (or some other city unfamiliar to you). A street map of the city would be a great help. But suppose you were given the wrong map, and it was actually a map of Detroit, even though labeled Chicago. Can you imagine the frustration and ineffectiveness of trying to reach your destination? Behavior and attitude could not help you if you start out with the wrong map. But once you get the right map, then diligence and attitude can make a real difference. But the first and most important requirement is the accuracy of the map."

Stephen Covey

I think we need a new map.

I just read Rick's editorial in the CJ and believe there is a lot of truth in what he says regarding our government's intention to remain in Iraq for a long time. This may have some impact on the editorial to the CJ.

Rick's view is a warning I believe. A warning that there is a sinister commonality of shared power at our goverments highest level, motivated by greed, power and special interests. One of the members of this commonality is the military and their industrial counterparts.

They must be made to realize that there is a new economic and defense paradigm fostered by a reduction in our power and wealth, a result of the military and economic excesses of Bush, and showing up in the latest economic and military failures and costs, but going back to Reagan and including Clinton. This new paradigm does not support or allow us to continue our military inteference in the Middle East, Mesopatamia or South Asia based on fear, economics and intervention. The new paradigm will require the use of our many other instruments of national power, reducing the military costs and uses to only direct national defense and security matters. This means less money and deployments around the world for our military while using our State Department. Our State Department should be driving the train in Iraq and Afghanistan with the military involved in only a limited way if at all. We must demilitarize our country and government.

The longer Obama is in Washington the more he is likely to become part of the sinister commonality of power that is meant to ensure the wealthy stay wealthy and businesses stay blessed and the military stay powerful. The new paradigm reality of us having less world power does not support the continuation of this sinister commonality of power. Change. Harold Trainer, USAF RET Viet Nam Vet

----- Original Message -----

...and the best way to do this is to get out of Iraq (and Afghanistan). The whole notion of turning soldiers into politicians and aid workers is daft...that's why we spend billions on USAID and the State Department. The reason why everyone is so bullish on the surge is that something moved...that something was a massive wealth transfer from the US to the Sunni chiefs who we paid off to stop fighting us. It's hardly battlefield glory...but the days of that kind of glory are likely over anyway in this age of COIN. We need to get out now but make sure to protect the Kurds and be ready to go back in temporarily if serious civil war breaks out...we broke Iraq, so we have to at least not stand-by while yet another atrocity happens on our watch.(I just love the people who say that we don't owe the Iraqis anything because we gave them their freedom!! Talk about stupid is as stupid does ). At the end of the day, as the world spirals towards depression and likely anarchy, we will need a military to keep the peace at-home and defend against the millions abroad who will have nothing to lose by attacking us. If things progress as they seem to be we will look back on the darkest days of Iraq as a walk in the proverbial park.

I guess the question is complex: How many combat-troops can be withdrawn without loosing the capacity to defend the supply of the troops remaining?

Pull back the perimeter until the remaining combat troops can defend the remaining supply lines.

How many combat-troops are nedded to protect the various investments made by private companies?

Write those off. They're sunk costs that are truly sunk.

And for that sake, how many are needed to stage a military coup if Maliki goes hardcore and joins Iran?

Don't go there. Just don't go there.

Just suppose he does that and the iraqis approve. We went to all this effort to set up a democratic government and then we overthrow it as soon as it does something we don't like? What utter hypocrisy. The next time an american talks about "democracy promotion" everybody will laugh. Even if it's in america.

On the other hand, suppose that after all our democracy promotion we have accidentally gotten a dictatorship that imposes its will on an unwilling iraqi public. Maliki has a good enough secret police to stop the people and the iraqi military from revolting, or maybe the military doesn't particularly want to revolt. That's mighty damn incompetent of us. Unless it was what we intended, in which case it's pretty incompetent that Maliki then managed to dump us for the iranians.

Any way you look at it, if that happens it's time for us to take our lumps. We achieved our goal. We got rid of Saddam, we got rid of his nukes, and we set up a democratic government. There's nothing left for us to win in iraq. If we re-invade iraq to keep them from "joining" iran, how will we sell it to anybody except hardcore geopolitics buffs?

We don't really know what will happen there when we're gone. But win, lose, draw, or change the gamerules, it's time for us to go.

I don't think anyone in the administration thinks that we'll be withdrawing from Iraq because everything is going great. My opinion, and I think that of most that favor withdrawal, is that we should leave because there's limited strategic gains available and we're unpopular among the Iraq people. I tend to put the most weight on the second point.

At present, the Status of Forces Agreement mandates withdraw by the end of 2011 and withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 2009. That's assuming we can win the referendum which will may be quite tricky if we haven't shown signs of heading out.

Tom Ricks' is an expert on this certainly, so I believe him that there's fighting ahead. But I read the Outlook article an aside from mentioning the risk of ejection he didn't talk about the SOFA.

What's the basis of for believing that the Iraqi popular opinion and/or the Iraqi government will reverse course and ask us to stay through 2015? I don't think in the past we became more popular when things got more violent. Similarly if the situation declines the Iraqi government will become more dependent on us, but the government itself would then become less popular and likely be voted out in favor of those that favor U.S. withdraw.

I apologize if Ricks explains this in the book, but I didn't catch it during his Daily Show appearance or in the Outlook article.