Look, I'm all for playing along with the fable that continues to be told by nearly everyone in Washington:
- Bush and company have been prattling on for more than two years that "stand up/stand down" is our timeline for leaving. (In the last couple of weeks, talk of "ramping up" training of the Iraqi military has been all the rage among the administration gang.)
- The ISG report claims that we should be able to train up enough Iraqis in the short term so that we can remove most U.S. combat forces during 2008.
- Democrats have jumped on this bandwagon as well, with too many Democrats to list here declaring that we need to get Iraqis trained so we can leave.
The dishonesty and hypocrisy flowing from Washington on Iraq is so deep and so broad that it is drowning our entire nation in lies.
I want out. Now. So I am willing to play along in this charade. But it leaves me feeling dirty. What I wouldn't do for some honest leadership...
(Read on...)
The truth is, the Iraqi military and police forces will never be "trained up" while we're doing the training. At least not in a timeframe that is both acceptable to politicians from either party or to the American public.
Let's take a look at where we stand and what a real training timeframe looks like:
Current Iraqi Force Status
From all indications, current Iraqi forces are either:
Nevermind the fact that the administration has consistently lied about Iraqi troop readiness. (Lawmakers Criticize Training And Deployment of Iraqi Forces)
(A brief, reverse history of ever-shifting Iraqi troop readiness/U.S. drawdown timelines)
Essentially, the current status of Iraqi forces (military and police) are either non-existent as a competent fighting force, or using our weapons and training to conduct ethnic cleansing/civil war.
The Near and Long Term Future of Iraqi Force Training
So what are the odds that we can actually train a competent Iraqi force and how long would such training take?
The ISG claimed we could train enough Iraqi forces to remove most of our combat troops during 2008. But, of course, the panel ignored its own military advisers in making that claim. (Will Iraq Study Group’s Plan Work on the Battlefield?)
The military's own trainers and experts suggest the actual timeframe may be a decade or more. (December 6 interview with Lt. Col. John Nagl who is in charge of training the trainers)
Training Iraqis to defend themselves and maintain security? It isn't going to happen. Particularly not without a functioning central government. So just about everyone in Washington is blowing smoke.
Other Options
So what are out other options? John McCain and others have called for 20,000 more troops. But as we know, that number is a joke. "Pissing in the ocean" is, I believe the correct expression for that blatant attempt at political ass-covering. ("See? No one would listen! I wanted to send more troops!")
But how many U.S. troops would we really need to quell the insurgency? Let's find out from an expert:
Burden of Victory
The Painful Arithmetic of Stability Operations
By James T. Quinlivan
...
The population of Iraq today is nearly 25 million. That population would require 500,000 foreign troops on the ground to meet a standard of 20 troops per thousand residents. This number is more than three times the number of foreign troops now deployed to Iraq (see figure). For a sustainable stabilization force on a 24-month rotation cycle, the international community would need to draw on a troop base of 2.5 million troops. Such numbers are clearly not feasible and emphasize the need for the rapid creation of indigenous security forces even while foreign troops continue to be deployed. The extremely low force ratio for Afghanistan, a country with a population even larger than that of Iraq, shows the implausibility of current stabilization efforts by external forces.
(See also: Force Requirements in Stability Operations)
Can you imagine any U.S. politician calling for the deployment of 500,000 Americans (what we had in Vietnam, by the way, and look how that worked out) to Iraq? Neither can I.
So what are we left with after this painful discussion of the realities of Iraq?
No Good Options: So Bring Them Home
What benefit is gained from the status quo given the above discussion? None that I can see. A hundred dead U.S. troops a month, thousands more U.S. troops injured, hundreds of thousands more Iraqis killed or maimed, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars flushed away and this endless stream of death and lost treasure goes on forever.
All to prevent what? An inevitable bloodletting that is ongoing anyway?
Do I feel bad about what our nation has done to the Iraqi people? Yes. But are we making things better by our continued presence? I don't think so. We are hated by all sides (save for the government which won't last a week after we leave). So what are we doing there?
Sure, I wish a large group of our political leaders would rise as one and be truthful on Iraq. But the truth is too painful for most of Washington to bear. They're looking to "save face" from this awful disaster.
So I'll play along. Let's train and equip those Iraqi troops and get out. But I say we finish by next week. (Why not? It has just as much validity as saying we'll have an Iraqi forced trained up by 2008!) Agreed?