Bait-and-Switch in Iraq
I found this piece at DavidCorn.com. Thought you might find it interesting, I know I did.
By David Corn
The other day I bumped into a retired general I know. He's a friend of General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq. I asked about a recent McClatchy Newspaper story by Nancy Youssef that reported that the training of Iraqi troops is no longer a priority for US forces in Iraq.
The April 19 piece began:
Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.
Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said....
[E]vidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq.
On January 10, when Bush announced his so-called surge in Iraq, he told the American people:
In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq.
So Bush promised Americans an accelerated training program, and that has not happened. This change in policy has not been officially announced. Moreover, it seems to undermine the reasoning behind the surge. The escalation, as Bush explained it, is supposed to create space and time during which better-trained Iraqi troops can take over the key security tasks within Iraq. That would permit the United States to withdraw its troops. The goal of the surge was to facilitate this transition. But if the United States is surging without boosting training (which has so far been a failure), it is assuming responsibility for quelling the sectarian violence without preparing the Iraqi military to take control. This is nothing but a recipe for open-ended involvement. Bush has pulled a bait-and-switch.
This retired general told me the McClatchy story was accurate. He called it another indication that the military mission has been lost and that the United States was stuck in the midst of a situation akin to a civil war. What ought to be done? I ask. He lowered his voice: we have to start bringing the troops home. Have you said that publicly? I inquired. Not yet, he replied. He's not ready to do so. It's hard to totally break with the war, he explained, noting he felt some loyalty to Petraeus. He recalled that recently he had been asked by members of Congress if the United States should begin withdrawing troops and he punted. But, he said, he's getting closer to telling the world how he really feels. "I don't know how long I can go without saying it," he remarked.
Republicans these days accuse Democrats of supporting surrender. But reality can intrude upon politics and even friendships. Just ask this former general. My hunch is that he won't stay silent for long. Meanwhile, Bush has yet to answer for a fundamental shift in Iraq policy--and for having misled the public about the goal of his escalation.
By David Corn
The other day I bumped into a retired general I know. He's a friend of General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq. I asked about a recent McClatchy Newspaper story by Nancy Youssef that reported that the training of Iraqi troops is no longer a priority for US forces in Iraq.
The April 19 piece began:
Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.
Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said....
[E]vidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq.
On January 10, when Bush announced his so-called surge in Iraq, he told the American people:
In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq.
So Bush promised Americans an accelerated training program, and that has not happened. This change in policy has not been officially announced. Moreover, it seems to undermine the reasoning behind the surge. The escalation, as Bush explained it, is supposed to create space and time during which better-trained Iraqi troops can take over the key security tasks within Iraq. That would permit the United States to withdraw its troops. The goal of the surge was to facilitate this transition. But if the United States is surging without boosting training (which has so far been a failure), it is assuming responsibility for quelling the sectarian violence without preparing the Iraqi military to take control. This is nothing but a recipe for open-ended involvement. Bush has pulled a bait-and-switch.
This retired general told me the McClatchy story was accurate. He called it another indication that the military mission has been lost and that the United States was stuck in the midst of a situation akin to a civil war. What ought to be done? I ask. He lowered his voice: we have to start bringing the troops home. Have you said that publicly? I inquired. Not yet, he replied. He's not ready to do so. It's hard to totally break with the war, he explained, noting he felt some loyalty to Petraeus. He recalled that recently he had been asked by members of Congress if the United States should begin withdrawing troops and he punted. But, he said, he's getting closer to telling the world how he really feels. "I don't know how long I can go without saying it," he remarked.
Republicans these days accuse Democrats of supporting surrender. But reality can intrude upon politics and even friendships. Just ask this former general. My hunch is that he won't stay silent for long. Meanwhile, Bush has yet to answer for a fundamental shift in Iraq policy--and for having misled the public about the goal of his escalation.
posted by Stan Matuska at 11:21 PM
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