In August 2010, the language the U.S. military uses to describe U.S. combat operations in Iraq will change — but the U.S. combat operations will not:
President Obama has set an August deadline for the end of the combat mission in Iraq. Here at this makeshift desert camp in the insurgent badlands of northern Iraq, a mission is under way that is not going to stop then: American soldiers hunting terrorists and covertly watching an Iraqi checkpoint staffed by police officers whom the soldiers say they do not trust.
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The withdrawal, which will reduce the number of American troops to 50,000 — from 112,000 earlier this year and close to 165,000 at the height of the surge — is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of matériel since World War II. It is also an exercise in semantics.What soldiers today would call combat operations — hunting insurgents, joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces to kill or arrest militants — will be called “stability operations.” Post-reduction, the United States military says the focus will be on advising and training Iraqi soldiers, providing security for civilian reconstruction teams and joint counterterrorism missions.
“In practical terms, nothing will change,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the top American military spokesman in Iraq. “We are already doing stability operations.” Americans ceased major combat in Iraq long ago, and that has been reflected in the number of casualties. So far this year, 14 soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, and 27 more from accidents, suicides and other noncombat causes, according to icasualties.org.
The excess machinery of war that remains in Iraq from when the combat war raged at its highest levels will be shipped out of Iraq — to Afghanistan, where it is needed to wage the first U.S. war, which was set aside in 2003 when the Bush administration decided to start a second war:
… The complex and flexible mission of cutting down forces while simultaneously keeping up the fight with a festering insurgency could prove a model for Afghanistan, where withdrawal is scheduled to begin next year. Next summer, the Americans will begin to leave Afghanistan, too, and they probably won’t be able to halt fighting completely as they do so.Beyond August the next Iraq deadline is the end of 2011, when all American troops are supposed to be gone. But few believe that America’s military involvement in Iraq will end then. The conventional wisdom among military officers, diplomats and Iraqi officials is that after a new government is formed, talks will begin about a longer-term American troop presence.
Behold the face of American “success” in Iraq (emphasis is mine):
American military officers praise the rising capability of the Iraqi security forces — especially in securing the country for the parliamentary elections in March. But questions of loyalty that arose during the sectarian warfare of 2006 and 2007 remain.So as some soldiers in the desert hunted for insurgents, others felt they needed [to] make sure that Iraqis at the checkpoint to Mosul were actually doing their jobs and stopping and searching vehicles. In Mosul, suicide attacks still regularly inflict damage.
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In the closing window of the American war here, commanders are still trying to kill as many militants as possible, because they say it keeps American forces and Iraqis safer. …
In other words, U.S. combat operations in Iraq continue because the problems that were created by the civil war that was caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq continue to this day. And U.S. combat operations in Iraq continue because they are necessary to ensure the safety of the American forces who are in Iraq to ensure the safety of American forces — and to ensure the safety of Iraqis whose lives are still endangered by the consequences of the U.S. combat forces that are in Iraq.
Success in this war means never having to say it’s over.
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