Democrats Understand That Withdrawal Will Take Years
This will not make the Liberal base very happy:
Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.
For instance:
John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in the region to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for American personnel, fight terrorism and train Iraqis.
In other words:
These positions and those of some rivals suggest that the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict — however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies the problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief. Antiwar advocates have raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats.
Perhaps it is time for Democrats to put an end to the rhetoric. We know what the liberal base wants to hear (withdrawal… NOW), but we also know that this is impossible. It will take years to completely withdraw from Iraq, some troops will stay in the war torn country, to limit the damage. A complete (and quick) withdrawal would be disastrous. Whether the liberal base likes it or not, this is reality.
13 Responses to “Democrats Understand That Withdrawal Will Take Years”
It’s not just liberal Democrats that want a prompt withdrawal. Libertarians and Ron Paul Republicans are also demanding a prompt withdrawal.
What people want is a quick withdrawal without any of those nasty guilty side-effects. They want to withdraw now and do it with a clear conscious, which is simply not possible. Kudos to the democratic candidates for at least recognizing that rapid and total withdrawal would be extremely irresponsible, despite a lot of political pressure to lie about it.
The impulse, especially from those who have opposed this disaster from the beginning is that “we never wanted in, and now we want to go, the symptoms of going aren’t our responsibility because YOU started it”. It’s simply childish. I always opposed the war and think that we should leave as much as we can as fast as we can, but we can’t just up an leave. What about all those Iraqis that helped us, will we simply abandon them and their families? How low can you go? I think I favor a combination of Clinton’s and Obama’s plan, forces to protect American personnel, help stabilize the Kurdish north (though that would lead to problems with Turkey) and strike at especially important terrorist targets.
Michael,
The same people who told us that a failure to invade Iraq would lead to disaster are now arguing that withdrawing from Iraq will lead to disaster. Why should we believe them.
Hawks argued that defeat in Vietnam would lead to the “domino effect”, in which Communism would quickly spread to other parts of the world. History has proven them wrong.
The ‘disaster’ part isn’t necessarily referring to a Domino effect (though if anything, that theory is probably more accurate in terms of the goals of the Islamists than it was to the Soviet communists). But what most people are talking about is our obligation to stand by the Iraqis, to prevent wholescale genocide against the Sunnis, etc. Part of the reason that we failed to gain support of the population of Iraq in the first place is that the Shi’a knew that we had abandoned them after the first Gulf war and the Sunni have no reason to think that we won’t do the same thing to them now. We left the Shi’a to the mercy of the Ba’athists, now will we similarly allow the Sunni to be slaughtered en masse by the Shi’a extremists?
I saw this coming since 1920 when the British just randomly drew up borders and made “Iraq” out of thin air.
I wrote “Domino effect”, but I should have written “Domino Theory.” The Domino Theory remains a theory to this day…and a seriously flawed one at that.
That really isn’t true. While you couldn’t say that domino theory was proven wrong either. Three countries had communist takeovers after the US pulled troops out in 1975. That withdraw of troops did not mean the US had no involvement in the region and The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is often given credit for halting the spread of communism and may not of survived to the point without US involvement. Realize that the first popular use of the domino theory was in ’54 with very different conditions prevailing.
I am not happy.
I do think that Kevin Drum raises an important question: What are these “residual forces” supposed to do?
The forces we have now can barely restraint the growing civil war; how are a smaller group of forces going to prevent that? And if we have significant forces on the ground there, how will we resist the pressure to intervene (and possibly increase our forces there) if things go bad?
I know Obama has explicitly said that his forces would not be involved in policing the genocide and Hillary’s plan doesn’t call for that either. So really, if that’s your concern neither of those two are addressing it. I have no idea how Edwards would magically reduce troops and stop the genocide either.
Ostensibly, those the Barack/Hillary forces would be tracking down Al Qaeda affiliates and supporting Kurdistan. Again, how they’ll hunt down the Al Qaeda types, I don’t know. Also going to Kurdistan might not be such a good idea with the PKK/Turkey relationship.
Frankly, there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in the plans from almost all the candidates. They appear to be more geared toward satisfying political constituencies and less on the realities of what is and is not possible. Obama, for instance, calls for the removal of all combat brigades but wants to leave forces for counterterrorism, force protection and training the Iraqi Army. I’m not sure how Obama plans to do all that without any BCT’s, perhaps someone could enlighten me. I also wonder how we’re supposed to do “counterterrorism” with a force that will be holed up on defended bases and unable to, you know, do the footwork of actually finding “terrorist” elements. Killing terrorists is the easy part – finding them will be impossible under Obama’s (and most others) plan.
The plans of the other candidates are similarly flawed in that their goals are often conflicting or downright unrealistic. President Bush has given us enough faith-based military planning – we don’t need the same tripe from the other side as well. One would think that after the disaster that Iraq has become that future candidates would enlist some actual expertise in formulating them to avoid foolishness in the future. No such luck it appears.
There’s a difference between withdrawing immediately and starting withdrawal immediately.
Democrats rightly refuse to do the first. They are also, idiotically, refusing to do the second.
Democrats need to say:
We will not fund this war past date X. (About a year in advance) If you do not like that date, feel free to present rational reasons why it is wrong, and why withdrawal will take longer, but be aware that is currently the plan. No funding bills will be passed to to fund the war past six months before that day. We won’t put any requirements for withdrawal or anything in the funding bills, we are not going to manage withdrawal, you are the executive branch and it’s your job.
We will give you as much funding as you want until then. If, at that point, six months before the end, you’re acting like responsible adults and are already withdrawing, we’ll keep whatever level of funding you need without preconditions, and might even extend the timeline for the withdrawal if you can demonstrate some sort of need.
If, however, you are acting like idiots and haven’t bothered to withdraw anyone yet, or are deliberately stalling, we’ll add such a requirement and micromanage the six-month exit, because the funding for the war is stopping, period, and in six months soldiers would wake up and not get paid or be able to eat. You may not care about that, but we do.
That’s what they should have said the second they were elected. Not even their first day in office, they should have said it when we work up to a Democratic majority in the House. Doesn’t need a vote, doesn’t need anything, it would just be a simple statement by House Democrats on policy. They can still just come out and say it.
Our success in Anbar and other areas was due to the creation of authorized Sunni Militias, if we draw down what will these military units do? As Alan points out how will we keep the peace with less forces than we have now, more local militia units and if so under whose control? Every attempt to draw down will be meet with incidents that spark sectarian violence that draws us back in. The Iraqi parliament has shown itself utterly incapable of making the hard decisions necessary to forge a lasting peace, and without a political settlement we are stuck in the middle. That leaves you with the unenviable choice of deciding a withdrawal date and giving an ultimatum on some political settlement, letting the chips fall where they may if the demands are not meet. The UN is showing some signs of taking an interest in Iraq and helping the US extricate our forces, but domestic political considerations might mean that their effort will be too late to avoid a monumental tragedy.
The UN is showing some signs of taking an interest in Iraq
They must have found underage girls there to prostitute, otherwise why would they get involved?