Saturday Editorial: Iraq is defenseless until we stop "staying the course"

As the curfew in Iraq succeeded in the short term at preventing mass violence just days after sectarian attacks destroyed a Shiite shrine, the Pentagon today quietly downgraded the status of some of the Iraqi forces that were supposed to have been fully trained.  The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support -- yes, there's only one battalion able to fight on its own -- has been officially downgraded to a status preventing it from battling insurgents without the help of U.S. forces.  So you got it: three years and almost $1 trillion into this war, and now zero Iraqi battalions are fully capable of fighting on their own.

This is a very striking setback, especially for centrist Democrats like myself that continue to advocate the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.  Some of the faithful are beginning to lose interest.  William F. Buckley, Editor of the National Review, wrote in a column released late-Friday about how the "American objective in Iraq has failed."

From a personal standpoint, I prefer not to look at the past in any other way than acknowledging a series of lessons that can help mankind best prepare for the future.  Rehashing old stories about lies involving weapons of mass destruction, coupled with Bush's allegedly conspiratorial oil ambitions, have already been done.  Most Americans know that we all have been duped.  We're beyond that now.  The better question is not what can we complain about, but rather what can we do from here on out?

Yesterday in my column on Iraq, I outlined two different plans we could pursue.  The first is a policy centered around renewed pressure applied by U.S. political leaders towards the Iraqi governing body by setting deadlines for benchmarks pertaining to Iraqi troop readiness.  If Iraq meets those benchmarks, they will then be closer to a point where they can defend for themselves.  If they fail to meet the benchmarks, we will threaten them with the possibility of our own troop withdrawal from Iraq.  This plan puts pressure on the three political factions within Iraq to work together, or else face the possibility of being left on their own. 

The second plan -- which should only be pursued if the first plan does not work -- calls for the immediate division of the country into three different territories: Sunni, Shiite and Kurd.  This division would last for five years (think of it as a cooling off period), and would be approved by the United Nations Security Council.  Most significant would be the fact that it would allow our forces to leave Iraq immediately and be redeployed throughout the Middle East, enabling us to respond better to emergencies in the war against terrorism.

Again, these are just ideas.  I am completely opposed to the idea of pulling our troops out immediately, essentially leaving the Iraqi forces to crumble under the constant threat from local religious militias.  A lawless Iraq will severely destabilize the global economic markets and also provide a huge setback in the effort to make the world safer from fear.  At the same time, the situation on the ground is growing less manageable by the day.  It's time to alter course in Iraq -- a country whose representative government will continue to grow more defenseless until we abandon our tunnel-minded philosophy of "staying the course", and instead act preemptively to reverse the certainty of future chaos.  This might be our last chance to take a different road of policy before it is too late.  We still can make this work.

Comments

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