[ppi] [ppiindia] Iraq exit on the agenda

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**http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GG27Ak01.html


Iraq exit on the agenda
By Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON - Growing pessimism about averting civil war in Iraq as well as 
concerns that the US military presence there may itself be fueling the 
insurgency and Islamist extremism worldwide, have spurred a spate of new calls 
for the United States to withdraw its 140,000 troops sooner rather than later. 

Though resolutions to establish at least a timeline for withdrawal have so far 
gained the support of only about a quarter of the members of Congress, the 
absence of tangible progress in turning back the insurgency is adding to fears 
on Capitol Hill that the administration's hopes of stabilizing the situation, 
let alone giving birth to a pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Arab 
world, are delusory. 

"In January, we had Congressional staff hanging up on us when we called to say 
that we want to discuss shifting US policy from more guns and more troops 
towards withdrawal," said Jim Cason, communications director of the lobby group 
Friends Committee on National Legislation. "Now they want to talk about it." 

While the Bush administration still insists that civil war will be avoided and 
current negotiations to produce a new constitution by the middle of next month 
remain on track, the continuing high level of violence and the strength and 
sophistication of predominantly Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters are 
clearly having an effect here. 

That was made clearest in two New York Times articles published Sunday, 
including one entitled "Defying US Efforts, Guerrillas in Iraq Refocus and 
Strengthen," and another, by John Burns, a veteran Times reporter who has spent 
considerable time in Iraq, entitled "If It's Civil War, Do We Know It?" 

The latter story recounted the recent intensification of Sunni violence against 
the Shi'ite community that provoked even the ever-patient Shi'ite religious 
leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to whom Washington has increasingly deferred in 
guiding the political transition, to call on the Shi'ite-led government to 
"defend the country against mass annihilation". 

"From the moment American troops crossed the border 28 months ago", Burns 
wrote, "the specter hanging over the American enterprise here has been that 
Iraq, freed from (Saddam) Hussein's tyranny, might prove to be so fractured ... 
that [it] would spiral inexorably into civil war". 

"Now, events are pointing more than ever to the possibility that the nightmare 
could come true," according to Burns, who noted that Shi'ite militias and 
Shi'ite and Kurdish-led army and police units were taking increasingly 
aggressive counter-measures, including abducting, torturing, and executing 
suspected insurgents and their perceived sympathizers and defenders. 

The other article, by two Baghdad-based Times correspondents, quoted unnamed 
senior military officers reiterating two big frustrations that have been heard 
since July 2003: that the insurgency appears to be "growing more violent, more 
resilient and more sophisticated than ever", and that prosecuting the war is 
like sowing dragons' teeth. 

"We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents," one senior US Army 
intelligence officer told the Times. "But they're being replaced quicker than 
we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to 
step up and take charge." 

Such assessments are spurring what rapidly has become a cottage industry - 
particularly from the Democratic side of the political spectrum - fueled in 
part by the leak in early July of a British contingency plan that called for 
halving the number of US and British troops in Iraq by the latter part of 2006. 

Thus on July 15, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch 
published a column in the Times calling for a "prompt withdrawal plan", with 
the initial drawdown set to coincide with the Iraqi elections scheduled for 
December 15. That would include a timetable for reducing the scope of military 
operations, while maintaining a "regional quick-reaction force" in reserve, as 
well as ongoing intelligence and training programs. 

At the same time, the US would urge the Iraqi government and its neighbors to 
recognize their common interest in Baghdad's peaceful evolution without 
external intervention and commit itself to an economic assistance program to 
Iraq "so long as it stays on a peaceful path" as well as to the wider region so 
as to encourage cooperation. 

A more detailed plan emerged several days later from the Boston-based Project 
on Defense Alternatives (PDA) calling for complete withdrawal by September 
2006, except for the retention of a multinational civilian and military 
monitoring and training contingent of less than 10,000 (of which the US 
military presence would be limited to 2,000 troops). 

The plan, to take effect August 1, would begin with the adoption of a 
withdrawal timeline, a sharp deescalation of the war in Sunni areas, a shift of 
US resources to its training mission, and the transfer to elected officials of 
foreign military control of localities "without the interference of federal or 
coalition authorities". 

"The key to enabling total US troop withdrawal from Iraq within 400 days is 
achieving a political accord with Sunni leaders at all levels and with Iraq's 
neighbors - especially Syria and Iran," according to the report by defense 
analyst Carl Conetta. "The proximal aim would be to immediately lower the level 
of conflict inside Iraq by constricting both active and passive support for the 
insurgency, inside and outside the country." 

Like the two other authors, veteran Middle East analyst Helena Cobban also 
believes that the continued US military presence in Iraq is counterproductive 
to longer-term American interests and is effectively fueling the insurgency. 
But she goes further than the other two, calling for a withdrawal strategy that 
is "total, speedy, and generous to the Iraqi people". 

Her model is Israel's 2000 exit from southern Lebanon, noting that, despite 
deep fears that that withdrawal would touch off "mayhem and revenge, none came 
to pass". 

A prior announcement of "imminent total withdrawal" would serve to "focus the 
minds of Iraqis considerably", particularly on reconstruction if the US and 
other countries are sufficiently generous and "make [Iraqis] far less 
hospitable to insurgents, especially those who get their impetus from the 
prospect of a prolonged foreign occupation". 

All the authors take issue with the conventional assumption that the US 
military presence is a stabilizing factor, without which Iraq's descent into 
civil war would be more certain or bloody. 

They also argue that the administration's argument that Washington's global 
"credibility" is outweighed by other considerations, including the damage that 
the continued US presence does to American interests in the Arab and Islamic 
world, and the reduced ability of the US to deal with other important security 
challenges while it remains bogged down in Iraq. 

As noted by former CIA director Deutch, continued investment in a losing 
proposition could result in "an even worse loss of credibility down the road". 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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