ROGER SIMON COLUMN
NOVEMBER 23, 2005
WASHINGTON - - When U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq last week, the White House quickly denounced him.
But this week U.S. military officials were leaking word of their plans to withdraw around 50,000 troops from Iraq next year.
A phased withdrawal of troops has been talked about for a long time, even though it is clear the United States is not winning the war in Iraq. As Murtha, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Defense, pointed out, insurgent incidents have increased as the fighting has continued.
"Instead of attacks going down over time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically," he said. "Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism."
But that is not the reason we are planning to withdraw troops from Iraq next year. We are withdrawing them, because every member of the House and one-third of the Senate is up for re-election next November, and Republicans have made clear to President Bush there has to be some kind of troop withdrawal or they may lose control of Congress.
President Bush denies that policy in Iraq is tied to politics in America, but in the modern White House politics and policy are inextricably linked.
Officially, Bush's policy on troop withdrawal is very simple. It is fewer than 10 words long. And he likes to repeat it.
June 28, 2005: "Our strategy can be summed up this way," President Bush said in a speech. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."
Aug. 11, 2005: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down," the president told reporters.
And just last week, the president said once again, "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."
Though the White House spin does fudge (are you shocked?) at what "standing up" really means.
According to the White House, "more than 160,000 Iraqi security forces are now trained and equipped." Some, President Bush has said, are capable of operating independently and others need our support.
So how many of those 160,000 Iraqi troops are ready to stand up without our propping them up?
Some 750 soldiers. More than two and a half years after beginning this war, we have managed to train only a tiny number of Iraqis to fight on their own.
Which is why more than 150,000 Americans are in Iraq fighting for them.
It is easy to blame the Iraqis for not standing up and fighting for their own country and I admit I have been guilty of this in the past.
But there was a story that caught my attention the other day. It was on the front page of the New York Times, but even so it did not make a big splash.
It was headlined, "Lack of Armor Proves Deadly For Iraqi Army," and it said: "Even as American forces are relying more on Iraqis to fight the insurgency, the Iraqi Army is facing some of the same procurement problems that American troops have experienced in getting adequate armor and other equipment, according to interviews in Iraq with American and Iraqi military officials. But if the Americans have faced an uphill battle in getting vital gear -- their shortfalls continue to this day -- then their Iraqi counterparts are confronting a herculean task."
We all know that American forces were rushed into this war without adequate equipment for the occupation of Iraq and many have died or have been horribly wounded because of inadequate body armor and inadequate vehicle armor.
But while the situation is not good for American troops, the situation for Iraqi troops is horrendous.
"Unlike the Americans, the vast majority of Iraqis have neither armored nor unarmored Humvees, and are still having to navigate the booby-trapped roads of Iraq in pickup and flatbed trucks," the story said. "The makeshift armoring operation started in the spring has managed to reinforce only about three dozen vehicles…."
Three dozen vehicles! To fight a war in which there are approximately 700 insurgent attacks each week.
Yes, we are training the Iraqis to fight. But as Kalev Sepp, a retired Army Special Forces colonel and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, who has worked on counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, said: "Even the best training won't stop an AK-47 bullet or deflect a blast from a grenade or mine."
Even though we are spending billions and billions on this war, we are still trying to fight it on the cheap and we are still not getting the troops the equipment they need to survive.
President Bush says we will stand down when the Iraqis stand up.
But if, when the Iraqis stand up, they get blown up, what good does that do?
Posted by rsimon at November 23, 2005 04:40 PM