http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GG27Ak01.html
Iraq exit on the agenda By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - Growing pessimism about averting civil war in Iraq as well as concerns that the US military presence there may itself be fueling the insurgency and Islamist extremism worldwide, have spurred a spate of new calls for the United States to withdraw its 140,000 troops sooner rather than later. Though resolutions to establish at least a timeline for withdrawal have so far gained the support of only about a quarter of the members of Congress, the absence of tangible progress in turning back the insurgency is adding to fears on Capitol Hill that the administration's hopes of stabilizing the situation, let alone giving birth to a pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Arab world, are delusory. "In January, we had Congressional staff hanging up on us when we called to say that we want to discuss shifting US policy from more guns and more troops towards withdrawal," said Jim Cason, communications director of the lobby group Friends Committee on National Legislation. "Now they want to talk about it." While the Bush administration still insists that civil war will be avoided and current negotiations to produce a new constitution by the middle of next month remain on track, the continuing high level of violence and the strength and sophistication of predominantly Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters are clearly having an effect here. That was made clearest in two New York Times articles published Sunday, including one entitled "Defying US Efforts, Guerrillas in Iraq Refocus and Strengthen," and another, by John Burns, a veteran Times reporter who has spent considerable time in Iraq, entitled "If It's Civil War, Do We Know It?" The latter story recounted the recent intensification of Sunni violence against the Shi'ite community that provoked even the ever-patient Shi'ite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to whom Washington has increasingly deferred in guiding the political transition, to call on the Shi'ite-led government to "defend the country against mass annihilation". "From the moment American troops crossed the border 28 months ago", Burns wrote, "the specter hanging over the American enterprise here has been that Iraq, freed from (Saddam) Hussein's tyranny, might prove to be so fractured ... that [it] would spiral inexorably into civil war". "Now, events are pointing more than ever to the possibility that the nightmare could come true," according to Burns, who noted that Shi'ite militias and Shi'ite and Kurdish-led army and police units were taking increasingly aggressive counter-measures, including abducting, torturing, and executing suspected insurgents and their perceived sympathizers and defenders. The other article, by two Baghdad-based Times correspondents, quoted unnamed senior military officers reiterating two big frustrations that have been heard since July 2003: that the insurgency appears to be "growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever", and that prosecuting the war is like sowing dragons' teeth. "We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents," one senior US Army intelligence officer told the Times. "But they're being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge." Such assessments are spurring what rapidly has become a cottage industry - particularly from the Democratic side of the political spectrum - fueled in part by the leak in early July of a British contingency plan that called for halving the number of US and British troops in Iraq by the latter part of 2006. Thus on July 15, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch published a column in the Times calling for a "prompt withdrawal plan", with the initial drawdown set to coincide with the Iraqi elections scheduled for December 15. That would include a timetable for reducing the scope of military operations, while maintaining a "regional quick-reaction force" in reserve, as well as ongoing intelligence and training programs. At the same time, the US would urge the Iraqi government and its neighbors to recognize their common interest in Baghdad's peaceful evolution without external intervention and commit itself to an economic assistance program to Iraq "so long as it stays on a peaceful path" as well as to the wider region so as to encourage cooperation. A more detailed plan emerged several days later from the Boston-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) calling for complete withdrawal by September 2006, except for the retention of a multinational civilian and military monitoring and training contingent of less than 10,000 (of which the US military presence would be limited to 2,000 troops). The plan, to take effect August 1, would begin with the adoption of a withdrawal timeline, a sharp deescalation of the war in Sunni areas, a shift of US resources to its training mission, and the transfer to elected officials of foreign military control of localities "without the interference of federal or coalition authorities". "The key to enabling total US troop withdrawal from Iraq within 400 days is achieving a political accord with Sunni leaders at all levels and with Iraq's neighbors - especially Syria and Iran," according to the report by defense analyst Carl Conetta. "The proximal aim would be to immediately lower the level of conflict inside Iraq by constricting both active and passive support for the insurgency, inside and outside the country." Like the two other authors, veteran Middle East analyst Helena Cobban also believes that the continued US military presence in Iraq is counterproductive to longer-term American interests and is effectively fueling the insurgency. But she goes further than the other two, calling for a withdrawal strategy that is "total, speedy, and generous to the Iraqi people". Her model is Israel's 2000 exit from southern Lebanon, noting that, despite deep fears that that withdrawal would touch off "mayhem and revenge, none came to pass". A prior announcement of "imminent total withdrawal" would serve to "focus the minds of Iraqis considerably", particularly on reconstruction if the US and other countries are sufficiently generous and "make [Iraqis] far less hospitable to insurgents, especially those who get their impetus from the prospect of a prolonged foreign occupation". All the authors take issue with the conventional assumption that the US military presence is a stabilizing factor, without which Iraq's descent into civil war would be more certain or bloody. They also argue that the administration's argument that Washington's global "credibility" is outweighed by other considerations, including the damage that the continued US presence does to American interests in the Arab and Islamic world, and the reduced ability of the US to deal with other important security challenges while it remains bogged down in Iraq. As noted by former CIA director Deutch, continued investment in a losing proposition could result in "an even worse loss of credibility down the road". [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12hjbkmvd/M=323294.6903899.7846637.3022212/D=groups/S=1705329729:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1122846624/A=2896130/R=0/SIG=11llkm9tk/*http://www.donorschoose.org/index.php?lc=yahooemail";>Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. 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