Kristol and Lowry: More troops and mission creep
William Kristol and Rich Lowry - Reinforce Baghdad - washingtonpost.com
These two leading conservative commentators call for a lot more boots on the ground, mainly in Baghdad.
The bottom line is this: More U.S. troops in Iraq would improve our chances of winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment. This means the ability to succeed in Iraq is, to some significant degree, within our control. The president should therefore order a substantial surge in overall troop levels in Iraq, with the additional forces focused on securing Baghdad.
They go on to say that Iraq’s security forces are just not ready yet, and that while we don’t want to create a culture of dependency, things have come to such a pass that we have no better choice. It’s worth reading their editorial in full.
I swear, I almost think we should go ahead and agree to let them do this. If it would settle the question once and for all, I think I would.
But it wouldn’t, of course. If it didn’t work, they’d just write another column blaming the failure on something else. Lack of willpower, maybe. Or the French.
In any case, it’s telling that they use the word “surge” and decline to provide an estimate of just how many more troops they think we need. A few thousand? Fifty thousand? Where are they going to come from? And do they really think that a surge would do the job? If they had the courage of their convictions, they’d provide a number, tell us what was needed to get the additional troops (pull them out of Korea? call up more reserves? extend tours of duty? institute a draft?), and admit candidly that these troops would need to be in country for at least several years. But they don’t.
If we try to estimate how many more troops might be needed, at a minimum, we would have to consider Anbar province as well as Baghdad. A classified report by the senior Marine intelligence officer in Iraq, Colonel Pete Devlin (reported in the WaPo and NYTimes), describes a deteriorating situation in Anbar.
The political and security situation in western Iraq is grim and will continue to deteriorate unless the region receives a major infusion of aid and a division is sent to reinforce the American troops operating there … Without the deployment of an additional division, “there is nothing MNF-W can do to influence the motivation of the Sunni to wage an insurgency,” the report states, according to a military officer familiar with it. MNF-W stands for Multinational Force-West, the formal name of the Marine command. A division numbers about 16,000 troops.
Of course, Devlin’s reference to a division is just an estimate, for Anbar province, which certainly would not imply a guarantee of success if that number were deployed. But, considering the much larger population of Baghdad, how about two divisions there, and since we are stretched thin across Iraq, how about one more for the rest of the country. Four divisions. 64,000. (I thought a division was 20,000, thus four would be 80,000.) There it is, 64,000 - 80,000 additional troops, just as a rough guess, with no guarantees of anything. If Kevin Drum, or anyone else, wants a number, there’s a number. My sole point being that it would be unrealistic to suggest that some smaller number might suffice.
There’s another part of the Kristol/Lowry piece that struck me, namely this quote:
“The territory over which we fight is among the most strategically important in the world. Victory will place the most dangerous regime on the planet, Iran’s fascist theocracy, in serious peril. Defeat will leave that same regime inestimably strengthened.”
Wait a minute! Isn’t this “mission creep?” Are we in Iraq because we need a bulwark against Iran’s fascist theocracy? When did this become the reason? I thought we went into Iraq because of the threat of WMDs, because Saddam was a brutal dictator, and because planting a free democracy in the Middle East would begin to treat the root causes of terrorism. And yes, to send a message to countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, etc.. In all those reasons, there is undoubtedly some connection to Iran.
But this “our victory in Iraq will imperil Iran’s fascist theocracy” is a bit different, isn’t it? Was the war about “On to Baghdad,” i.e. doing important stuff in Iraq? Or was it “On to Teheran … by way of Baghdad.”
I gotta holler “Bullshit!” This is mission creep of the first order. Think about the consequences of defining the mission in Iraq this way. Such a mission requires no other success in Iraq, beyond our troops being there, supplied and not driven out. As long as we can have some number of troops, sitting in tolerably secure bases, dodging IEDs, and moving around in armored columns, regardless of what else is happening (good or bad) in Iraq, then some could claim, “Aha, but we are holding the line against the mullahs in Iran.” Sorry. That’s a new game; that’s a different game. That is not what we signed up for.
Kristol: “Nicht!”
Looks like Bloodspite was right
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