Cross posted at JoeHoeffelandFriends.com and Mydd.com.
Our current plan in Iraq is not working. We are not reaching our goals there, and it is quite possible we never will.
Every American shares the President’s goal of establishing a tolerant, pluralistic Iraqi democracy that would be our ally and help bring peace and freedom to the Middle East. Few Americans remain optimistic about reaching this goal.
We cannot pull out our troops abruptly and hand the insurgents what would be a devastating victory, but neither can we continue to make an open-ended military commitment to prop up the “Republic of Iraq” at a huge cost in American lives and treasure.
We need a new plan for America’s future involvement that sets a deadline – not on us but on Iraq. We need Iraq to take over her own security against the insurgency. This new plan must provide clearly that we will stay in Iraq only as long as the Iraqi government and its military and security forces are stepping forward to fight for themselves. If Iraqis won’t fight for their own freedom and for the goal of a unified Iraq by our deadline, which sadly is very possible, then at that point we should bring our troops home.
Our military forces courageously defeated the Iraqi army two and one-half years ago, but we have yet to stabilize the country. Iraq remains a dangerous place where we are losing on average two soldiers each day since our invasion. Our troops are the best in the world, but obviously we have too few troops in Iraq, American or international, to control the raging and murderous insurgency.
The new government in Iraq will not be an American-style democracy. The Iraqi constitution establishes Islam as a primary source of civil law, and the constitution will not fully protect the rights of women or religious minorities. Unlike the United States, where the majority rules and the minority has guaranteed and enforceable rights under our constitution, Iraq will be ruled under the tyranny of a theocratic majority.
Our misadventure in Iraq is the greatest foreign policy debacle in United States history. It has created more terrorists than we have captured or killed, and has made our country less safe in the war against terror.
Our standing in the world is at a low point, astonishing since the entire world viewed us with sympathy and support following 9/11. Our arrogance and go-it-alone strategy and cowboy diplomacy has pushed away our friends and encouraged our enemies.
The President argues that we must stay the course in Iraq, which means maintaining current troop levels of about 140,000. But that level of military force has not been able to stabilize Iraq over the last two and one half years, and the insurgency is getting stronger.
Without security and stability in Iraq, there is no hope to establish a truly democratic, Western-friendly government or a free and tolerant civil society.
It is time to change the plan.
Clearly, the troops opposing the insurgency need to be at least triple the current force level, as the Army Chief of Staff advised Secretary Rumsfeld in 2003.
Given America’s other commitments and growing unhappiness with the war, we cannot achieve such an increase. Given the poor state of our diplomatic relations, our traditional allies and the international community are not interested in that level of support.
That leaves the Iraqis themselves as the only source of the additional military and security forces. The President recognizes this reality when he says Americans will stand down in Iraq when the Iraqis stand up. But when will that day be reached?
Let us set a deadline for the Iraqis- say, in six months, or next March on the third anniversary of our invasion – for their new government to be sufficiently formed and military and security forces sufficiently trained by us for the Republic of Iraq to take over. It is their country, and at some point they will have to run it and defend it.
If at the time of the deadline the Iraqis are making real progress but aren’t yet ready to take over, we could choose to stay on and help. If they are ready to defend themselves, we could decide to stand down in an orderly fashion.
But if the Iraqis are not ready, and are not making progress, even under the pressure of our deadline, then it might be time for us to leave. If Iraqis cannot rally around the ideal of a united nation, and won’t fight for their own freedom, then the insurgency is guaranteed a victory, sooner or later. The sooner we know the better.