2008 Woodie Awards
Debate Over American Withdrawal from Iraq Heats Up
Drew Brown/KRT
Issue date: 11/21/05 Section: News
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With casualties and financial costs mounting and public support for the war declining, the Bush administration is under increasing pressure to come up with a strategy for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.
President Bush has said the United States must stay the course because leaving Iraq before a stable government is in place and Iraqi security forces are capable of fighting insurgents on their own would leave that country in the hands of terrorists.
Some experts agree, saying the United States has little choice but to stay in Iraq until the president's conditions are met, because leaving too soon would lead to a civil war or even a regional conflict. Others argue that Iraq will become stable only when American forces leave.
"What began as a war of choice has now become a war of necessity. But I don't think that's been clearly communicated by the administration or understood very well by the American people," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, the executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan policy-research institute.
Krepinevich has advocated that U.S. and Iraqi forces focus on clearing out insurgents and establishing security in major cities and other key areas one at a time, instead of everywhere at once. The strategy would require years of commitment in terms of resources and American forces.
The only "backup plan" left is for the administration to "pick a despot (to run Iraq) and support him" and hope he respects our interests, he said.
Turkey fears that a move by Iraqi Kurds to establish their own country would stir up separatist sentiment among Kurds in Turkey; Shiite Muslim Iran sympathizes with Iraqi Shiites; and Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan back their brethren in Iraq.
"These people are playing for high stakes," Krepinevich said. "There will be no moderating influence as far as I can see."
The Senate's vote this week that Bush come up with a strategy for withdrawing troops is one example of how expectations for Iraq's future have been scaled back, said W. Andrew Terrill, the co-author of an Army War College study about disengagement that was published last month.
President Bush has said the United States must stay the course because leaving Iraq before a stable government is in place and Iraqi security forces are capable of fighting insurgents on their own would leave that country in the hands of terrorists.
Some experts agree, saying the United States has little choice but to stay in Iraq until the president's conditions are met, because leaving too soon would lead to a civil war or even a regional conflict. Others argue that Iraq will become stable only when American forces leave.
"What began as a war of choice has now become a war of necessity. But I don't think that's been clearly communicated by the administration or understood very well by the American people," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, the executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan policy-research institute.
Krepinevich has advocated that U.S. and Iraqi forces focus on clearing out insurgents and establishing security in major cities and other key areas one at a time, instead of everywhere at once. The strategy would require years of commitment in terms of resources and American forces.
The only "backup plan" left is for the administration to "pick a despot (to run Iraq) and support him" and hope he respects our interests, he said.
Turkey fears that a move by Iraqi Kurds to establish their own country would stir up separatist sentiment among Kurds in Turkey; Shiite Muslim Iran sympathizes with Iraqi Shiites; and Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan back their brethren in Iraq.
"These people are playing for high stakes," Krepinevich said. "There will be no moderating influence as far as I can see."
The Senate's vote this week that Bush come up with a strategy for withdrawing troops is one example of how expectations for Iraq's future have been scaled back, said W. Andrew Terrill, the co-author of an Army War College study about disengagement that was published last month.