Bush Says America’s Strategy is a Fighting Withdrawal

After 986 days of fighting, President Bush explained to America the US strategy for the “cakewalk” war in Iraq. Or at least, the White House put out a business school-style memo three dozen pages long full of rather meaningless nonsense, and the president spoke to cadets at the Naval Academy about how he believes the war is going. Somewhere in all of it, there is a strategy, despite Democratic carping. Quite simply, it is the most difficult of military actions – a fighting withdrawal.

The inanity of the White House memo called “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” includes such obvious statements as “Our mission in Iraq is to win the war” without troubling to define what “win” means. This is the type of non-thinking that pervades America's boardrooms, and apparently now passes for a policy paper in the executive branch of the government. Those truly interested in an informed view should read Precedents, Variables, and Options in Planning a US Military Disengagement Strategy from Iraq, by W. Andrew Terrill and Conrad C. Crane at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.

That said, the president has merely reiterated what he has said elsewhere. There is to be no withdrawal timetable, that US forces will stay until the job is done and not a day longer, and that dissent emboldens the enemy. It is a strategy to the extent that objectives are mentioned and resources allocated. There is, however, no objective measure of success, nor is there any suggestion that any outcome other than “complete victory” is acceptable or even considered in US planning. This suggests he has withdrawn into the Führerbunker and is no longer taking calls from the real world. Indeed yesterday, 400 insurgents took over the center of Ramadi; his claims of crushing resistance there ring hollow as do his other assertions.

Consider his statements about the battle at Tal Afar earlier this year. He told the midshipmen on Wednesday that 11 Iraqi battalions led the battle, and backed up by 5 coalition battalions, they carried the day. James Fallows at the Atlantic Monthly, Michael Ware (Time magazine’s Baghdad Bureau Chief) and CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre all dispute this. According to them (and Mr. Ware was actually with the troops at Tal Afar), the US planned the operation, gave the orders, led the forces into combat, did the logistics and otherwise ran the show. Mr. Ware’s rather scathing response to the White House includes “they're clearly lying [about Iraqi military capabilities], whether they know it or not. I mean, a very senior US military intelligence officer, one of the most high-ranking in the country, just in the last few days, said to me, these Iraqi forces will never be in a position to be able to crush this insurgency.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: The link is to a long transcript, and a text search for “Tal Afar” minus the quotation marks will help]. In choosing between accepting the word of three journalists and that of the White House, one must simply ask, “where are the weapons of mass destruction?”

There are about 160,000 US troops in Iraq right now, up from the base line 138,000 to provide some pre-election security. After the December 15 vote, there will be a draw down toward the base line. Mr. Bush’s people have said the US could be down to 100,000 before the end of 2006 – if circumstances allow. The trouble with a fighting withdrawal is that it takes so little to turn it into a rout, and relying on local troops to cover Yankee backs doesn’t have much of a history to recommend it. Maybe this strategy should have been plotted out in greater detail 986 days ago.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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