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The Center for American Progress has released a must-read new memo, entitled Strategic Drift in Iraq, about the dangerous shift in the Iraq debate that has occurred over the past several months. In short, it presents the dangers of the Iraq blurring strategy in terms of American and Iraqi security, rather than in electoral terms. Here are some choice passages, rebutting the need for the oft-repeated residual forces mission of "training Iraqi troops":
Suspend training and arming forces in a deadly civil war. To guard against the threat of an even larger civil war, the United States should suspend efforts to train, arm, and support Iraqi forces-the tribal forces and citizens groups, as well as the Iraqi police and army units that do not demonstrate allegiance to Iraq's national government. Continuing these efforts in the absence of some degree of national accommodation risks an even deadlier conflict.(…)
Pledging to continue training Iraq's security forces without questioning whether our actions amount to essentially arming up different sides in Iraq's internal conflicts risks further inflaming an already unstable Middle East.
American training of Iraqi troops has helped fuel violence in Iraq, not quell it. We all know this. It is front page news:
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.
And yet continuing to train Iraqi troops is exactly what both Clinton and Obama think America should do in Iraq until, say, 2013. I wonder how many more guns will go missing in that time period. This seems to make about as much sense as the "fighting terrorists" residual force mission. Because, you know, the presence of American troops in Iraq has really been effective at stamping out terrorism. We knew this in 2003:
War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al Qaeda and galvanized the Islamic militant group's will, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Wednesday in its annual report.
We knew it in 2004:
The war in Iraq probably helped boost al-Qaeda recruitment, according to a report from leading Western think-tank.
We knew it in 2005:
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.(…)
President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.
But, I guess, things will be different by 2013. Both the "train Iraqi troops" and "fight al-Qaeda" residual force missions are bogus and dangerous. Further, they help Bush and conservatives blur the way forward on Iraq, and the muddy the debate:
Several leading foreign policy thinkers and security institutes-some of the same ones who were wrong about going to war in Iraq in the first place and wrong about how to deal with the war's first four years-have helped build the case that aided the country's slide into strategic drift. Instead of offering plans that clarify the current drift, they have perpetuated it by triangulating against supposedly "irresponsible" withdrawal plans. Just as conservatives in Congress have done, they have failed to question the flawed premises at the heart of the administration's Iraq strategy.
Some progressive candidates have defaulted to policies of strategic drift because of legitimate fears about what might happen in Iraq, focused on three main concerns: terrorist sanctuaries, regional war, and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet ironically, strategic drift forestalls the actual hard work needed to avoid these potential dangers and does little or nothing to prevent them. Keeping tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq until the end of the next presidential term not only serves to prolong these problems but also creates new ones.
We are not going to quell violence or reduce terrorism in Iraq until we leave, and that includes residual forces. We are helping fuel sectarian violence when we train Iraqi troops and tens of thousands of weapons go missing. We are helping to increase terrorism in Iraq by serving as a recruiting tool. And we are going to have a very difficult time stopping any of this as long as the two leading Democratic candidates for president are advocating continuing these practices.
Go check out the whole memo. It is essential reading in the ongoing debate on Iraq.
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