One Utah

Withdrawal from Iraq is a foregone conclusion, given the state of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, and America’s worldwide security commitments. We just don’t have the 400,000 to 500,000 troops it would take to effectively occupy Iraq, and never did– even when the “Coalition of the Willing” was still willing. Attempting to do the impossible, the Bush administration has worn down our soldiers with 15-month combat tours, stop-loss, and repeat deployments of the same units to Iraq.

Some career military members have been sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time. Each time they go back, the fighting is more intense and there are more Iraqis trying to force an end to the occupation. There is no new strategy that can turn this around.

In today’s Washington Post, we learn that few Iraqis paid any attention to last week’s congressional hearings featuring General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

“The Americans have hundreds of meetings and testimonies like this, and what has it done for the Iraqi people? Nothing,” said Allah Sadiq, 49, a carpenter in the capital’s Karrada district. “So why do we care? We just want all the foreigners to leave and stop causing disasters for our country.”

…On the streets of the upscale neighborhood of Karrada, people tended to favor an immediate pullout of American troops, with many blaming the United States for the calamities plaguing the city.

“For five years, the Americans have not done anything for the Iraqis. What do they think they can do for us in one more year?” said Hussein Jabar, 36, an employee at the Ministry of Industry. “All the Americans do is protect themselves, and we Iraqis are the victims.”

The big question in this presidential election year: is anybody listening? Does anybody have a plan to do what has to be done right away? Senator Barack Obama claims he wants to get out of Iraq over a period of 16 months, except he constantly says, “we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless going in” and leave a small residual force. That makes very little sense. What would be the mission of the residual force, other than attempting to defend the world’s largest embassy complex under a hail of mortar shells and rockets? Any U.S. combat units left behind would be little more than targets.

Senator Hillary Clinton has no withdrawal plan, unless you count her commitment to order somebody to come up with a plan if she becomes President.

Senator John “100 years” McCain is completely out to lunch. Apparently unaware of the impossibility of keeping even 15 combat brigades in Iraq indefinitely, he wants to send more troops.

Meanwhile, President Bush is doing his best to dig such a deep hole in Iraq that the next president will have a very hard time climbing out. That $736 million embassy is just part of it. He’s also negotiating with Maliki’s Green Zone government to sign a perpetual defense agreement, without the consent of Congress.

This entry was posted Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Disaster, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, John McCain, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.