Conservatives, and even some moderates and liberals, consider troop withdrawals to be an abandonment of Iraq. Clearly, they are correct in this assessment. The other side tends to focus on the lack of progress with our troops there and the American losses in the meantime. Clearly, the are correct in their assessment.
Two months before the year's end, 2007 has already been declared the deadliest year for American troops in Iraq, the total deaths as of Tuesday morning is 3,857. This pales in comparison to most of the other wars America fought in the last century, Gulf I notwithstanding. The United States lost nearly ten times that in the Korean War. Still, this is a war of attrition
The UN estimated that there have been approximately 35,000 Iraqi deaths (civilian) in 2006 alone. The total number of Iraqi deaths since 2003 could easily double this number. Which brings us back to the conservatives' point, leaving now is most likely to increase this number further.
Except that this is a point largely taken for granted. I cannot easily find hard numbers, but I highly doubt that the death toll was anywhere near this high under Saddam, even with his occasional mass killings. Oh, and they also could play in the street, go to school, have reliable running water and electricity etc. More pointedly, 2002 was a better year for Iraqis than any of the last four.
This is a powerful point, the American troop presence in Iraq has done nothing to stabilize the country, if anything things are getting worse. As Philip Carter points out, falling death tolls in certain Baghdad neighborhoods may only be evidence that one side successfully kicked out the other side, or simply killed them.
In light of all of this, it is clear that we need a better idea of what the consequences of a Turn and Run strategy would be. Unfortunately, there is no real way to predict what will happen. I believe the most likely scenario is that Iraq falls into a full scale civil war until the Shiities or Sunnis gain control (sorry Kurds, you don't stand a chance). This is a doom and gloom scenario but also a likely one. Ironically, it may be that in long run it actually leads to fewer Iraqi deaths rather than more.
Still before we close the case on this we might ask, is there a way to stabilize Iraq without cutting and running? I believe there is, but nobody wants to do it or even say the word. There is no question that our Army and Marines and weakening. This means that even maintaining our current troop level will be difficult (or impossible) without, yes, that word, the draft.
Nobody likes this idea. No politician wants to be behind it, even if he or she were, their party would not want them to be behind it. No college student or recent high school graduate wants it, and more than anything, the Army doesn't want it. For some strange reason when you force people to fight in a war they don't want to exist they don't fight as well as those who are voluntarily there (where voluntarily means that joined on their own, it doesn't speak to forced redeployments).
Currently we have about 170,000 troops in Iraq, give or take a few. You have to be, well, stupid to believe that this is getting the job done. Wars are generally decided by brute force more than tactics (there are exceptions, Vietnam, the Revolutionary War), but if you are outgunned you are going to have problems for sure.
I've been saying for awhile (I can't find blog postings on it, but friends would confirm I've been saying this since the beginning or near beginning of the invasion) that at least 250,000 troops are needed in Iraq. RAND (a large thinktank focusing on the US armed forces) found that twice that number would be needed in 2003, before things got really bad.
We do not have that luxury at present, we would only get it with a draft, or if we were willingly to double, maybe triple, maybe quadruple armed services salaries. Either way, it still would take a minimum of 18 months to train and equip these troops (if we seriously try to boost troop levels that high it would likely take longer, realistically, to do it well, five years).
We then end up with three options, increase troop levels by over 200%, maintain the poorly performing status quo, or turn and run.
There are many more facets to these arguments that I have time to address here (or at least energy to address), but what comes through is this: A Turn and Run strategy may be better for Iraq overall. No, its not fair that we came in and broke it, but we don't have the ability to fix it, and leaving the pieces on the ground may end up being the best option.
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