Pentagon Considers Withdrawal from Deadliest Iraqi Province

ABC News ^

[ARealMothersSonForever]

I give Maj-Gen Caldwell much more credibility than "a senior US intelligence official". Seems like Lugar must have gotten back from Germany.

[Marine_Uncle]

I am not going to knee jerk on this one. To much frigen un-reliable news is being put out from to many sources.
Al Anbar is a huge piece of real estate. And it borders on Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia down almost to Kuwait.
Putting things into a little bit of perspective.
It contains most of the highly volatile villages, towns, cities, and some real remote shit holes of sunni/Saddamist/al Qaeda hold outs that have managed to stay alive thus far.

Given the fact that a large number of the sunni tribes in this province have now decided to fight along side the Iraqi and US troops to take out remaining goons per above basic list, it is remotely possible there are arrangements being made to hand over al Anbar province to the Iraqi forces and let them continue to build up the local sunni tribal groups to fight along side of them against al Qaeda and Saddamist sponsored groups.
And most probably if this where an actual reality, they still would depend on us for air support, both Army Air Cav and Navy, Airforce, Marine Jet fighter bomber support.
We have to remember we are have the huge air base at Assad AFB north west of ar Ramadi.
That is the Marine HQ for al Anbar as well as the main source of air support in not only al Anbar but in the northern provinces.
One just does not pull out of this type operation on the fly.
So I am taking this news with a grain of salt.

[adam_smith_76]

We should have considered this several years ago. A military is not a police department, nor should it be one. The country belongs to Iraqis, and they need to fight for their own freedom. If they don't care enough, screw it.

We keep redefining the mission in Iraq. Initially it was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and take Saddam out of power, and then it became rebuilding Iraq into a stable democracy. I hate to be in the minoriry, but I don't particularly want Iraq to be a democracy because it's going to get handed over to Iran in their political process.

Several years ago we could have withdrawn most of our troops, set up a secure base in Iraq, trained Iraqis there, and let them wallow in the mess. We could have declared victory. Instead, we slowly trained Iraqis and put them in safe areas because we didn't trust them to fight. Because of mission creep, we now "lose the war" unless Iraq has a stable democracy, neatly swept streets, and sidewalk cafes where the lattes are always hot. Iraq is quite probably going to be a mess for a long time to come, we'll pull out, and the Islamic radicals will say they forced us out.

What angers me the most about our troups sitting in Iraq year after year is that Iran grows in power every day. Iran is the real enemy whose kooky leader quite possibly wants an Armageddon to bring out the hidden Imam. We've so burned though our political capital with the public that I don't see anyone now supporting a war with Iran. No public support, no war. Iran wins.

I pray that our next president will realize that the military isn't for building schools, pipelines, or democratic governments. It isn't for policing or winning hearts and minds. A properly employed military achieves a specific political goal through it's only tool: destruction.

[SunkenCiv]

Well put. Thanks TK for the ping.

[af_vet_rr]

A military is not a police department, nor should it be one.

100% agreed. Unfortunately, Bush, even though he promised otherwise, continued a trend that went into high gear under JFK, slwoed down for a couple of decades, and then kicked back into high gear under Clinton, a trend of nation building with our military. The problem is, as we found out in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, and elsewhere, is that we may have noble goals, but if those goals are not shared by the natives of whatever country we are active in, or the natives aren't 100% behind them, then we are basically misusing our military.

We keep redefining the mission in Iraq. Initially it was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and take Saddam out of power, and then it became rebuilding Iraq into a stable democracy.

I've never bought into the administration's line about WMD and the like - even before we publicly had the evidence/information they used to justify it, it always felt very flimsy to me. In my view, we either needed to finish the job we started under the first Bush administration, or we needed to get out and/or focus our efforts elsewhere. I also view this as a front in the war between radicals in the Middle East, and Israel and the West.

Unfortunately, we have reduced politics to soundbites, and the administration could sell the whole WMD thing a lot easier to the public in 30-second soundbites, rather than finishing what we started 15 years ago. That's a reflection upon our society, not the administration - too many people in our society want everything to be in black and white, and refuse to think about difficult choices that fall into the gray area.

Several years ago we could have withdrawn most of our troops, set up a secure base in Iraq, trained Iraqis there, and let them wallow in the mess.

This would be an interesting strategy - rather than try to be everywhere at once, we setup secure areas, and then only go into areas where the Iraqis ask us to go, and where the Iraqis show a commitment to helping us out.

Instead, we now have almost 3000 dead Americans and over 20,000 wounded Americans. I know those numbers aren't big in the general scheme of things, but again, when you look at them in 30-second soundbites in the news, they somehow become much larger.

We could have declared victory.

President Bush did declare victory.

Instead, we slowly trained Iraqis and put them in safe areas because we didn't trust them to fight.

This has bothered me a great deal. There are good Iraqis - we know this. We should have been giving them a lot more responsibility than we have. Made them invest themselves, so to speak, in the successes or failures. Instead, we treat them as benchwarmers, and then when we finally need them, we wonder why they aren't excited or as committed as we think they would be.

Because of mission creep, we now "lose the war" unless Iraq has a stable democracy, neatly swept streets, and sidewalk cafes where the lattes are always hot.

Agreed.. I had high hopes that we wouldn't get mission creep and that we wouldn't get into nation building, but friends and family members who have been in Iraq and in the region in general have said the mission creep started up fairly fast. Part of it may have been due to the fact that the intitial invasion happened so quickly that maybe many who opposed us never felt defeated, as well as we all of the sudden had troops in Baghdad and the Iraqi people not being used to freedom, wondering what we were going to do to help them.

Iraq is quite probably going to be a mess for a long time to come, we'll pull out, and the Islamic radicals will say they forced us out.

It's another Yugoslavia in some ways - a collection of people who do not historically get along, and whose borders were not drawn up through natural geography or war, but instead by a bunch of mapmakers after the Ottoman Empire fell (I'm oversimplifying, but the people who drew up borders of some of the countries in that region did not take into account historical conflicts).

It's compounded by the fact that you have surrounding nations who do not want a stable democracy next door to them.

[McGavin999]

If they are it's just to get out of the way of the tribes who are kicking Al Qaeda's butt. Remember, the tribes don't have rules of engagement, nor are they signatory to the Geneva Convention, they just outright torture these guys until they give up their buddies and then they kill them.

[furquhart]

I don't think that we actually pull out. We just, quietly stand aside.