To save Iraq, the U.S. must commit money, resources - and remove some troops
By Barry R. McCaffrey
A collapse of the Iraqi state would be catastrophic - for the people
of Iraq, for the Middle East and for America's strategic interests. We
need a new political and military approach to head off this impending
disaster - one crafted with bipartisan congressional support. But
Baker-Hamilton isn't it.
Our objective should be a large-scale U.S. military withdrawal
within the next 36 months, leaving in place an Iraqi government in a
stable and mostly peaceful country that does not threaten its six
neighboring states and does not intend to possess weapons of mass
destruction.
The courage and skill of the U.S. armed forces have been awe-inspiring.
Our soldiers, Marines and Special Operations forces have suffered
25,000 wounded and killed, with many thousands permanently maimed,
while fighting this $400 billion war.
But the situation in Iraq is perilous and growing worse. Thousands
of Iraqis are killed each month; hundreds of thousands are refugees.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is largely
dysfunctional. Our allies, including the brave and competent British,
are nearly gone. Baghdad has become the central battlefield in this
struggle, which involves not just politically inspired civil war but
also rampant criminality and violence carried out by foreign
jihadists. Shiite and Sunni Arabs overwhelmingly anticipate and
endorse a U.S. strategic withdrawal and defeat.
We could immediately and totally withdraw. In less than six
months, our 150,000 troops could fight their way along strategic
withdrawal corridors back to the sea and the safety provided by the
Navy. Several million terrified refugees would follow, the route of
our columns marked by the burning pyres of abandoned military supplies
demolished by our rear guard. The resulting civil warfare would
probably turn Iraq into a humanitarian disaster and might well draw in
the Iranians and Syrians. It would also deeply threaten the safety and
stability of our allies in neighboring countries.
There is a better option.
First, we must commit publicly to provide $10 billion a year in
economic support to the Iraqis over the next five years. In the
military arena, it would be feasible to equip and increase the Iraqi
armed forces on a crash basis over the next 24 months (but not the
police or the Facilities Protection Service). The goal would be
250,000 troops, provided with the material and training necessary to
maintain internal order.
Within the first 12 months we should draw down the U.S. military
presence from 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), of 5,000 troops each, to
10. Within the next 12 months, Centcom forces should further draw down
to seven BCTs and withdraw from urban areas to isolated U.S. operating
bases - where we could continue to provide oversight and intervention
when required to rescue our embedded U.S. training teams, protect the
population from violence or save the legal government.
Finally, we have to design and empower a regional diplomatic peace
dialogue in which the Iraqis can take the lead, engaging their
regional neighbors as well as their own alienated and fractured
internal population.
We are in a very difficult position created by a micromanaged
Rumsfeld war team that has been incompetent, arrogant and in denial.
The departing defense secretary, in a recent farewell Pentagon town
hall meeting, criticized the alleged distortions of the U.S. media,
saying that they chose to report a few bombs going off in Baghdad
rather than the peaceful scene he witnessed from his helicopter flying
over the city. This was a perfect, and incredible, continuation of
Donald Rumsfeld's willful blindness in his approach to the war. From
the safety of his helicopter, he apparently could not hear the nearly
constant rattle of small-arms fire, did not know of the hundreds of
Marines and soldiers being killed or wounded each month, or see the
chaos, murder and desperation of daily life for Iraqi families.
Let me add a note of caution regarding a deceptive and unwise
option that springs from the work of the Iraq Study Group. We must not
entertain the shallow, partisan notion of rapidly withdrawing most
organized Marine and Army fighting units by early 2008 and
substituting for them a much larger number of U.S. advisers - a 400
percent increase - as a way to avoid a difficult debate for both
parties in the New Hampshire primaries.
This would leave some 40,000 U.S. logistics and adviser troops
spread out and vulnerable, all over Iraq. It would decrease our
leverage with Iraq's neighbors. It would not get at the problem of a
continuing civil war. In fact, significantly increasing the number of
U.S. advisers in each company and battalion of the Iraqi army and
police - to act as role models - is itself a bad idea. We are
foreigners. They want us gone.
Lack of combat experience is not the central issue Iraqis face.
Their problems are corrupt and incompetent ministries, poor equipment,
an untrained and unreliable sectarian officer corps (a result of
Rumsfeld's disbanding the Iraqi army), and a lack of political will
caused by the failure of a legitimate Iraqi government to emerge.
We need fewer advisers, not more - selected from elite, active
military units and with at least 90 days of immersion training in
Arabic. Iraqi troops will not fight because of iron discipline
enforced by U.S. sergeants and officers. That is a self-serving
domestic political concept that would put us at risk of a national
military humiliation.
All of this may not work. We have very few options left. In my
judgment, taking down the Saddam Hussein regime was a huge gift to the
Iraqi people.
Done right, it might have left the region and the United States
safer for years to come. But the American people have withdrawn their
support for the war, although they remain intensely committed to and
protective of our armed forces.
We have run out of time.
Our troops and their families will remain bitter for a generation
if we abandon the Iraqis, just as another generation did after we
abandoned the South Vietnamese for whom Americans had fought and died.
We owe them and our own national interest this one last effort.
If we cannot generate the political will to take this action, it
is time to pull out and search for those we will hold responsible in
Congress and the administration.
Barry McCaffrey is a retired Army general and adjutant professor
of international affairs at West Point. He served four combat tours
and was wounded in action three times.
*McCAFFREY, BARRY H., CAPTAIN, INFANTRY, United States Army
2d Airborne Task Force, Airborne Division Advisory Detachment (Airborne),
APO 96307
Awarded: Distinguished Service Cross
Date action: 6 October 1966
Theater: Republic of Vietnam
Reason: For extraordinary heroism in connection with military
operations involving conflict with an armed hostile force in the
Republic of Vietnam: Captain (then First Lieutenant) McCaffrey
distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 6 October
1966 while advising a Vietnamese Airborne Battalion on a search and
clear operation near Dong Ha. At 0315 hours the camp received intense
mortar fire which severely wounded Captain McCaffrey in the shoulder.
With complete disregard for his safety, he unhesitatingly ran through
the intense automatic weapons and mortar fire to estimate the severity
of the attack. He soon discovered that the senior American advisor had
been killed, and all but one of the company commanders were seriously
wounded. After rendering aid to the casualties, Captain McCaffrey took
command and dauntlessly proceeded around the perimeter to direct the
defense against the insurgent human wave assaults. Again he was
wounded by mortar fragments, but ignored his own condition and quickly
organized a counterattack which successfully repelled another Viet
Cong attack. During the remainder of the 12-hour battle, Captain
McCaffrey repeatedly exposed himself to the hostile fire and directed
artillery and air strikes against the insurgent forces. Through his
unremitting courage and personal example, he inspired the besieged
Vietnamese unit to defeat four determined Viet Cong attacks and
inflict heavy casualties on a numerically superior hostile force. Only
after assuring that all the wounded had been extracted, and that a
replacement advisor was with the battalion, did he permit himself to
be evacuated. Captain McCaffrey's extraordinary heroism and devotion
to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military
service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the
United States Army.
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