President Bush time after time has shown his incompetence and his failure to “get it”. Bush’s decision to expand U.S. troops in Iraq will once again show this. This will not be his first increase in troops that has proven to be of no help in stemming the bloodshed though. I fear his motivation is ideologically driven and this will not be his last attempt to “achieve victory”. There are basically three options in Iraq: immediate withdrawal, phased redeployment and stay engaged in a political solution, and an expansion of military options by adding U.S. troops to fight civil war.
The first option is to start an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, telling the Iraqis there is nothing more we can do. We have given all the support we can; now the ball is in your court. This is not likely, nor is it truly a feasible idea since it would create a power vacuum where regional players like Turkey who supports the Kurds, the Saudi’s who support the Sunnis, and the Iranians who support for the Shias, would create instability as they vied for power. Without the U.S. playing an active role in to situation, violence over power will erupt throughout the Mideast.
The second option is an increase in troops. His increase of 20,000+ is not enough to create the stability needed in Iraq. He tried this one other time and it has only gotten worse. Remember the number of troops General Shinseki
said would be required to bring about stability in that country. If we are too truly support the idea of a surge in troops to clamp down on the violence, we would have to stop fighting this war as if we were merely battling a PR campaign. War is not pleasant, and by simply adding 20,000 we are merely adding fuel to the fire, not acting to extinguish it. If we were to go with this option we would need at least 100,000, as suggested by Shinseki, to clamp down the insurgency with pure brut force. But this is not the best option either.
The third option lies in the middle, a phased withdrawal and redeployment of troops to other areas in the Mideast and to more remote parts of Iraq. For success to come out of Iraq, we must alter our way of thinking. We must acknowledge a military solution is not the answer any longer. We must extricate ourselves from the day to day sectarian violence. We must truly engage others in the region like Iran and Syria, and we must bring in the global community to help bring about a political settlement as well. We must act as a broker in this process while providing only a number of limited troops for security and training. The current go it alone military strategy is not working.
