The fact that Washington has reduced its troop deployment in Iraq from a high of 165,000 a couple of years ago to the 50,000 who remain today will not only permit Obama to claim compliance with a key campaign promise, but, more importantly, to also relieve pressure on what virtually all analysts agree is a military force that was badly "overstretched" during the "war on terror."One of the main features of war that our policymakers often seem to leave out of account is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one.
If all goes according to plan, the remaining troops will be withdrawn over the next 17 months, although most experts believe Baghdad, depending on the composition of the government and the its army’s effectiveness and confidence, will likely request some continued U.S. military presence - in a training capacity at least - for some years after.
That assumes, however, that all will go according to plan. The fact that the Iraqis have so far been unable to put together a government more than five months after national elections - the focus of a sudden trip by Vice President Joseph Biden to Baghdad Monday - has stoked fears that the "national reconciliation" that was supposed to be achieved by Gen. David Petraeus’ vaunted "Surge" tactics in 2007 and 2008 has in fact not taken place, and that both ethnic and sectarian tensions that brought the country to the bring of all-out civil war remain to be resolved.
U.S. military officials, who note that the remaining troops will still be prepared to engage in combat operations if requested by the Iraqis, are themselves warning that violence is likely to increase. In just the last week al Qaeda in Mesopotamia pulled off more than a dozen co-ordinated attacks across the country, killing more than 50 people.
Tags: iraq war
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