Say Anything Blog

According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has had it’s own review of options in Iraq. According to the reporting, there are 3 options.

The first is Go Big. That means putting more troops in Iraq, calling up more reservists and getting more Iraqi troops in the fight against sectarian violence.

The second is Go Long. Put an emphasis on training and supporting the Iraqi military and police. Eventually decreasing troop strength to about 60,000 US troops in Iraq.

The Third is Go Home. This option means rolling up our forces and deploying out of Iraq as soon as possible.

“Go Big,” the first option, originally contemplated a large increase in U.S. troops in Iraq to try to break the cycle of sectarian and insurgent violence. A classic counterinsurgency campaign, though, would require several hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed Iraqi police. That option has been all but rejected by the study group, which concluded that there are not enough troops in the U.S. military and not enough effective Iraqi forces, said sources who have been informally briefed on the review.

“Go Home,” the third option, calls for a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops. It was rejected by the Pentagon group as likely to push Iraq directly into a full-blown and bloody civil war.

The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one—“Go Long”—and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.

The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a “Go Long” option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.

Even so, there is concern that such a radical shift in the U.S. posture in Iraq could further damage the standing of its government, which U.S. officials worry is already shaky. Under the hybrid plan, the short increase in U.S. troop levels would be followed by a long-term plan to radically cut the presence, perhaps to 60,000 troops.
The Pentagon official said this short-term boost could be achieved through three steps: extending the tours of duty of some units already in Iraq, sending other units there earlier than planned and activating some Army Reserve units.

The group concluded that such a step might be necessary because it is concerned that the continuing violence is undercutting the Iraqi government’s credibility. “Folks increasingly realize that if violence can’t be contained, the spiral downward will continue, the national government will lose the effectiveness it has . . . . and then all bets will be off,” the official said.

Also, it would take months to prepare and implement the expansion of the program to train and advise Iraqi forces, he noted. The military will have to find those additional advisers, prepare them for the deployment, get infrastructure in place to house and feed them, order and ship equipment for them to use, and recruit additional Iraqis for them to train.

“The ‘Go Long’ approach is one that can work if there is sufficient strategic patience, resources appropriated and [if] leadership executes effectively,” a military intelligence official said.

Another potential obstacle to the “Go Long” option is that it runs counter to the impulse of many congressional Democrats to find a way to get out of Iraq quickly. Planners envision taking five to 10 more years to create a stable and competent Iraqi army. Because it doesn’t lead to a swift exit, some Democrats could criticize this option as a disguised version of “staying the course.”

The Pentagon group has given a thumbs-down to what it considered variants of withdrawal, such as pulling U.S. units out of the cities and keeping them in isolated enclaves, where they would not interact with the Iraqi population but would be available to combat major insurgent offensives and also to protect the government against coups.

So here is basically what our Pentagon is hoping happens. We increase our troop levels for a few months to try and limit the sectarian violence. Then we get troops out of Iraq fast and down to about 60,000 troops. Let them back-up the Iraqi government forces and train them for combat. While this is going on, we hope that the Iraqi government magically turns into some sort of legitimate Jeffersonian Democracy instead of a corrupt government that it is now. We are trusting the Iraqi government to stop the militias and sectarian violence in Iraq. We are hoping that the government will force out ministers that are playing up sectarian differences and attacking other government ministries. We are hoping that Iran will not continue to influence the Shiite majority. We are hoping that the terrorists linked to the Sunnis will stop rising up in Iraq. And, by the way, we are praying that Kurdistan will decide to come back and participate in this government fully instead of declaring independence. All the Kurds need to do is formally declare independence from Iraq right now and they have a stable, functioning government. Oh, and the Pentagon believes that this can be done between 5 and 10 years from now.

This is the same Pentagon that we have been hearing for over the past week haven’t been happy with this Administration about Iraq since Saddam was toppled. The reason that they didn’t stand up and say I believe that we need to change our strategy in Iraq to the President of the United Sates in private was the fear of being forced to retire. They weren’t acting like proud Americans during that time, they were trying to keep their jobs. Nice going by those Patriotic American Generals of telling the Secretary of Defense that his plans were garbage. The one last thing that I want to mention is how in God’s green earth are you going to be able to have Iraqi government forces that are mixed or of a different religious group going into Shiite or Sunni territories and not get hit by sectarian violence? The answer in my mind is that you don’t.

I have said this before and I’ll say it again. The 2 options that are left on the table should be “Go Big” or “Go Home”. If you believe that we can pull Iraq out of the fire, you should be with Senator McCain and “Go Big.” If you believe that Iraq is a lost cause, you should support the House Democrats and “Go Home.” Because this “Go Long” strategy hasn’t worked for the first 3 years, and there are no indications that it will work in the future.