Rethinking Withdrawal From Iraq

I have argued before (see this, this and this, for instance) that, however illegitimate our reasons for invading Iraq were, we have no choice but to stick it out until some semblance of order has been restored and the Iraqi government and security forces are sufficiently well-established and stable to provide some hope that Iraq (and we) will not suffer the fate Afghanistan did when the Soviets finally withdrew. Recently, though, I have read some things that make question this belief.

The first of these was an article on the lessons of Vietnam by Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense under Nixon, in the (November/December) issue of Foreign Affairs. The article is more than a bit self-serving. For instance, Laird says that the way we got into Vietnam (with which he had nothing to do, of course) is "a textbook example of how not to commit American might," while the way we withdrew from Vietnam (with which he claims to have had everything to do) is "the textbook description of how the U. S. military should decamp." More broadly, and more irritatingly, the article is full of "I's," as in "I did this" and "I did that", relegating Nixon and Kissinger to the status of a sometimes reluctant acolytes. Still, for all of that, Laird makes two points that bear thinking about.

First, Laird argues Vietnam was doomed not the withdrawal of American troops but by the failure of Congress two years later to continue to provide support financial and military assistance to the South.

The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. . . . Without U.S. funding [to counter the massive support the North was getting from the Soviets], South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973. I believed then and still believe today that given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe Iraq can do the same now."

Laird's second and more compelling point is that a commitment to withdrawal was actually a condition precedent to getting the South Vietnamese to defend themselves. He points out that, initially, the most ardent opponents of withdrawal were the South Vietnamese government, "which had turned into a dependent." Laird reprots that when he met with Thieu in 1969 to tell him "the spigot was going to be shut off" Thieu wanted more troops not fewer. Laird argues with some force, in short, that neither the Vietnamese nor the Iraqis can be expected to "stand up" unless and until they become convinced that the US is going to start "standing down":

[As we did in Vietnam,] [w]e need to put our resources and unwavering public support behind a program of "Iraqization" so that we can get out of Iraq and leave the Iraqis in a position to protect themselves. . . . The United States should not let too many more weeks pass before it shows its confidence in the training of the Iraqi armed forces by withdrawing a few thousand U.S. troops from the country. We owe it to the restive people back home to let them know there is an exit strategy, and, more important, we owe it to the Iraqi people. The readiness of the Iraqi forces need not be 100 percent, nor must the new democracy be perfect before we begin our withdrawal. The immediate need is to show our confidence that Iraqis can take care of Iraq on their own terms. Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency.

Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis of the Center For American Progress make much the same point in a paper being widely circulated among Democrats, arguing that a phased withdrawal from Iraq should begin as early as January of next year:

Our open-ended commitment of a large number of troops has created a dysfunctional political transition and may be preventing Iraqi political leaders from making the difficult compromises necessary to complete the transition.

Not setting a timetable is a recipe for failure and send the wrong message to the leadership in the Iraqi government -- that they can use the United States as a crutch. As long as the Iraqi leaders believe we will remain in large numbers they will have no incentives to make the compromises in the political transition process necessary to create a stable society. . . . [Also] there is a fundamental problem at the heart of President Bush's vision of our eventual withdrawal of troops -- "As the Iraqis stand up we will stand down." Iraqi forces will never truly stand up on their own as long as we are there in such great numbers. The current debate on Iraqi troop training focuses on building combat skills but ignores an equally important factor -- motivation. Our large military presence creates a disincentive for the Iraqi military and police to step up and take ownership of their security.

In addition, though, Korb makes an additional argument that, if true, is even more compelling: an open-ended commitment of 100,000 or more troops to Iraq poses a clear and present danger to the U. S. Army itself, at least as an all volunteer force. Korb expanded on this point in an earlier column originally published in the New York Daily News:

Gen. Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for President Lyndon Johnson, said that while we sent the Army to Vietnam to save Vietnam, we had to withdraw to save the Army. This is where we are today.

By the end of this year, nearly every active-duty soldier will have spent at least two tours in Iraq. . . . Moreover, since the active-duty Army was too small to implement effectively Bush's preventive war in Iraq, the administration has had to rely unduly on the National Guard and Reserves. Part-time soldiers make up about 40% of the troops in Iraq. In order to keep so many reservists there, the Pentagon has had to violate its norm of not mobilizing reservists for more than one year out of five.

Sending [active duty] soldiers back for a third time will ruin the Army's retention rate, which so far has held up. Staying in Iraq through 2006 will completely undermine the Army's recruiting, which despite massive increases in enlistment bonuses is already a disaster. Keeping 50,000 reservists in Iraq throughout 2006 will force the administration to ask Congress to repeal the law that forbids reservists from serving on the active duty for more than two years.

It is hard to argue with any of this. But what gives me pause is that the cost of being wrong -- of withdrawing too early or too quickly -- is potentially enormous. Even during the height of the buildup in Vietnam, no one ever claimed that the fall of South Vietnam would pose an immediate threat to US security. No one argued, for instance that Vietnam would attack us. That war was simply one battle in a much larger ideological war against communism. We cannot be so sanguine about Iraq. Absent a stable government, there is a very real possibility that Iraq will become another pre-9/11 Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks themselves are a testament to how great -- and immediate -- threat that would pose to US security. But, as Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds argue, also in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, it is not just the US that is in danger:

The foreign volunteers in Afghanistan saw the Soviet defeat as a victory for Islam against a superpower that had invaded a Muslim country. Estimates of the number of foreign fighters who fought in Afghanistan begin in the low thousands; some spent years in combat, while others came only for what amounted to a jihad vacation. The jihadists gained legitimacy and prestige from their triumph both within the militant community and among ordinary Muslims, as well as the confidence to carry their jihad to other countries where they believed Muslims required assistance. When veterans of the guerrilla campaign returned home with their experience, ideology, and weapons, they destabilized once-tranquil countries and inflamed already unstable ones.

Moreover, Bergen and Reynolds argue, Iraq could well be much worse than Afghanistan:

The current war in Iraq will generate a ferocious blowback of its own, which -- as a recent classified CIA assessment predicts -- could be longer and more powerful than that from Afghanistan. Foreign volunteers fighting U.S. troops in Iraq today will find new targets around the world after the war ends.

My God, what a mess!