Recruitment lags and lower goals are met with lower standards that are so severe that obese criminals are encouraged to sign up for combat. Desperate commanders are forced to give aid to those recently killing Americans, with total troop levels actually higher than the announced surge through rotation abuses and greater reliance not only on Sunni insurgents but on mercenary forces and subcontracted security personnel.
Meanwhile, the new British prime minister will soon announce that nation’s withdrawal, while the war in Afghanistan deterioriates; the beneficiaries of that war are warlords, poppy merchants, and the Taliban and al Qaeda, who are recruiting and expanding within nations we call allies. Our Afghanistan mission and the true battle against terrorism are eroded by our terminal obsession with Iraq.
This is the situation the president, Republicans in Congress and some Democrats are now calling a “success.”
There is a better way — a way that’s not easy, but possible, with a greater chance of true success.
The escalation should be ended, now, with a very careful and orderly reduction of troops starting immediately and proceeding into next year. Nothing precipitous; that is a straw man from a desperate administration. What is needed is a reversal from a war without end and an endless escalation to a careful and orderly de-escalation proceeding in phases that would involve both some reduction and some redeployment of American troops.
Whatever chances of reconciliation exist would rise with this new policy. Instead of providing aid to the different warring factions, Iraqis would know that there is a finite limit to how many Americans we will sacrifice while they continue their sectarian wars.
Note: This change would allow even more aggressive and intense American attacks on al Qaeda in Iraq, strengthen our mission in Afghanistan and allow escalated American attacks against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and on the border with Pakistan.
A redeployed American military would also allow far stronger interdiction of arms coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran, while dramatically lowering American casualties and raising the pressures on Iraqis to reconcile with cease-fires and broad agreements with each other, if they choose.
Moving to a course of deescalation, now, and rejecting a course of escalation, into 2008, is far wiser and far better for our security, our troops and our true battle against terrorism than further continuing this catastrophic policy of presidential intransigence and Democratic submission hidden by the latest generation of political spin.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
