"The United States has accomplished all it’s likely to accomplish in Iraq. It’s certainly unseated Saddam Hussein, so that was one objective met. It snuffed out probably for a good long time Iraq’s unrequited quest for weapons of mass destruction, and it’s given Iraqis a shot at pluralistic, democratic government. Those are the achievements. Nothing more is going to be achieved, and every day we stay in Iraq, the higher the price we pay for what we’ve already achieved.

For that reason alone I think it makes sense to depart. Iraq’s problems are fundamentally political, and they’re not going to be resolved by the presence of American forces; indeed, U.S. troop levels have varied between 130,000 and 180,000 over the course of the past three and a half years, and the intensity and the scope of the violence has increased but Iraqis themselves haven’t really yet gotten political traction. There are obviously severe problems, and they are simply not susceptible to the American military cure.

When you consider that we’re losing about one hundred soldiers a month, not to mention contractors, this is a very high price to pay for objectives that are unachievable at this point. I think it is better to leave while we can do it as a volitional act, in an orderly, deliberate, and methodical way, properly coordinated with the Iraqi government, discussed carefully and fully with the governments of surrounding countries, and done in a way so that we can best protect our U.S. interests upon departure. The sooner we start, the sooner we can begin to limit the damage we’re already incurring, and begin to prepare for the postwar environment.

The damage being done to the American reputation and therefore its diplomatic effectiveness worldwide is a very serious penalty for a campaign that is not succeeding in what it was intended to do. And this has other ramifications. On the one hand, we’ve got the bulk of our ground forces tied up in Iraq, which makes them unavailable, or at least unavailable quickly, for use in another contingency. That’s a real constraint that we have to take very seriously.

As long as we’re in Iraq, we’re also going to have a White House that is necessarily preoccupied by the crisis there and unable to focus on other challenges. The discussion thus far has been on the costs of disengaging or withdrawing, rather than the cost of staying. And it’s not that there are no costs to leaving. There are significant costs to leaving, rooted in the misplaced and poorly executed intervention to begin with. We will have to take steps to buttress our credibility, the perceptions of American reliability. There will be concerns about an Iran that already thinks it has the upper hand becoming more emboldened and possibly reckless. There are serious costs to leaving and they’re not to be denied. But the costs of staying have been increasing and on balance they’re going to get bigger."
http://www.cfr.org/publication/12560/diminishing_returns_in_iraq.html

Steven Simon has a plan to get all of our troops out by 2008 and recently had it published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Here it is, without further ado, the 64 page solution:
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/IraqCSR23.pdf

With this kind of defeatist attitude, the US would have begged japan for surrender terms after Guadalcanal.

We're losing less than 50 s0ldiers per month, and while any individual loss is a tragedy for that soldiers family, the overall loss rate is minimal.

The Iraq area is an area of extreme importance to the US, and is is well withn out best interests to maintain a major presence.

The problem is, Bush hasn't presented the case this way. He's always hedged. He's never said, "We need a strong military presence in Iraq indefinite, and we consider the 'loss rate' acceptable." It was all about WMD and deposing Saddam, remember?

Instead, Bush lets the notion continue that as soon as we defeat the "enemy," or as soon as the Iraqis can, we could pull out.

As I've said before, how you view "defeat" or "victory" depends on how you view the whole Iraq engagement. Your Guadalcanal analogy works for you because you view the fight in Iraq as part of the "global war on terror" and against "the enemy." Your analogy means nada to those of us who see Iraq as a mistake from the beginning, based on false or misleading information, information, unrelated to the fight against terrorists (until we invaded, anyway).

Andrew

I can see us leaving in about 2 years, by then the Iraq military will be capable of controlling things, but they will continue needing American logistical and Air support.

The S Vietnamese army was almost self sufficent when we left, and if Congress hadnt cut off all funding for the South, the North probably wouldnt have been able to reinvade with the ease they did.

We are doing a few things different with the Iraqi army training, we didnt do with the S Vietnamese, for one we have much more control over the senior officer picks. Also we are spending a lot of time training the NCO's and junior officers on both technical and western standards.

The problem is, you can't view the Iraq situation purely in military terms. That's why we've been there for four years now. I'm sure many would have made the same two year assessment you've made in the first year or two of the occupation. (More commonly we've heard "the next six months will be crucial" over and over again.)

The problems in Iraq are more political than military. It makes no difference how the army is trained if some of them are Shiites and some are Suni and they are secretly part of insurgent groups fighting the other side. We can't force them to get along. If they can't get along, who cares how much training and equipment we give them?

Andrew

The political is more important than the military, but the military has to be solved first, in order to give the politicans a chance.

You can't solve one first and not the other. It's not like the US civil war where there were too clear sides. If many of the Union soldiers were secretly southern synthpathizers (or maybe even anti-Union Southerners), secretly helping the South by sabatoging operations or killing Union soldiers, the Civil War would never have ended in a Union victory the way it did.

Andrew

Our civil war was a lot like the iraqi war, you had a lot of southern sympathisers in the north and west, and they brought a lot of pressure on Lincoln to end the war, if Gen lee had won, or had a draw at gettysberg, Lincoln would probably lost his reelection, and the war would have been over.

I'd say the Iraq civil war is almost nothing like ours. There aren't two armies actively engaged in military operations against each other. There is no third country (the US in Iraq) occupying the country. The British and the French considered recognizing the CSA in the US Civil War, but they didn't send troops the way al Qaeda has into Iraq on the Sunni side. There had been no previous government that had been overthrown before the US civil war and a new one was not trying to be formed.

The two situations are very, very different.

Andrew

"We're losing less than 50 s0ldiers per month, and while any individual loss is a tragedy for that soldiers family, the overall loss rate is minimal."

Are you F'in kidding me?

You really think only immediate "family" suffers? Ever throw a rock (or your compassion, perhaps?) into some still water? Every single fatality and severe (physical or mental) injury affects us all in many (yet incalcuable) ways.

You actually think the "overall loss rate is minimal".

What the heck are these people dying for? I agree with Andrew 2:

"Your analogy means nada to those of us who see Iraq as a mistake from the beginning, based on false or misleading information, information, unrelated to the fight against terrorists..."

I still see nothing that I believe to be of benefit to us, except possibly oil, and that's no reason to be losing "somebody else's" family's child, spouse, parent, sister, brother, whatever. Enough is enough.

Bin Who?

nwokie sez: "I can see us leaving in about 2 years, by then the Iraq military will be capable of controlling things"

Now how the heck would you know this? After all, our own vice president said nearly 2 years ago it would be about 6 months. Do you have inside information that Dick Cheney doesn't have or was Dick just lying then and not now?

Anyway, little presented a compelling escape route for Bush to run with providing enough actual fact-based accomplishments to declare VICTORY (with a bit of spinning). But no, Bush is so DUMB he can't even make good decisions to save his own face.

The only reason for continuing to engage Iraq is to keep the door open for Iran.

Heard on radio news headlines today: "...and to crush their ideology." --The Resident.

We do not need a religious war, and this completely whacked idea of progressive disruption in the region is shaping up to be exactly that.

...and it galls me to know it's all done on an incomplete authorization. We need to revoke that, provide funding for a strutured withdraw, then consider future actions, given SOLID JUSTIFICATION.

It is not possible to win this war, because it is not a war. We never declared it, we have not defined what winning it means, and we have no idea what we are getting for having done it.

I watched the movie Lawrence of Arabia (1965) this weekend and was struck by the fact the Arabs were divided into tribes, and all had the culture of fighting and killing each other. The movie was set in the 1920s era.

Some things have never changed. Just the weapons have gotten more deadly.

The S Vietnamese army was almost self sufficent when we left, and if Congress hadnt cut off all funding for the South, the North probably wouldnt have been able to reinvade with the ease they did."

No, the South Vietnamese Army was not anywhere NEAR self-sufficient. It's hard for a group to be self-sufficient in an area where 70-80 percent of the population (and a large percentage of the army itself) is sympathetic to the Communist north. Even if we kept funding the South, Ho Chi Minh's boys would have inevitably had control of the whole place.

Iraq isn't so cut-and-dry, though I do highly doubt the ability of the Iraqi armed forces to maintain control. There are just too many interests on all sides who want to see it end on THEIR terms, and are willing to do whatever is necessary to make the end to their means. Also keep in mind that the Iraqi army is primarily funded and trained by the United States, and ALL sides there will fight that to the very end.

I still personally think the ONLY way to save face is to get the hell out.

Deane, and we expect to fix this?

Exactly KSKD! I (and others) have equated it to a domestic dispute, by far the most dangerous of police calls.

I know the plan is a tome, but it does encompass solutions that address keeping the Hatfields and McCoys at bay long enough for us to lose far fewer of our best Americans.

These pages get sadder and longer as this drags on and on:
http://oregonatwar.oregonlive.com/iraq/
http://oregonatwar.blogs.oregonlive.com/

yeah, that's another thing. we might actually need these kids to defend our country elsewhere but here we are tossing them into Bush's black hole of death for no good reason at all.

But hey! NW_Okie says it's only 50 kids a month! That's only one per state! And who cares besides their family?