Winding Down the War?

It’s a possibility says Alan Bock:

There is even a possibility, now that the election is over and the need to appear infallible is less apparently pressing, that the administration will assess Iraq more objectively, begin to understand how badly things are going and how difficult it will be to establish a viable democracy in Iraq, and decide to cut their losses.

They would be unlikely to put it that way, of course. They would say that our invasion has removed a brutal dictator and cleared the path for a decent government to do the hard work on its own (with oil revenues, of course) of charting a better path for Iraq and the entire Middle East. Having accomplished so much, and having no imperial ambitions, as we have said all along, we are handing off the job to the viable Iraqi government and the grateful Iraqi people. Our policy has been a rip-roaring success, and all those wimpy naysayers have been proven wrong….

A best-case scenario: pulling off reasonably credible elections in January, having the security situation stabilize as potential insurgents see a possible alternative future, drawing down U.S. troop levels gradually until full control is turned over to a broadly supported new government in late 2005 or early 2006. That would give the U.S. more flexibility and options for dealing with stateless terrorism and emerging challenges from Iran and North Korea….

The threats of the near future, we can point out, are more likely to come from terrorist cells and guerrilla forces than from nation-states seeking to challenge U.S. dominance. The best way to deal with them is through agile, mobile, high-tech special forces able to move quickly and lethally and improvise in the field – Secretary Rumsfeld’s “lean and mean” military vision in spades. Stationing large numbers of conventional troops in Germany, Okinawa, Korea, and Central Asia – let alone the volatile Middle East – is more likely to stir resentment than to improve national security. It’s long past time to move beyond Cold War deployments and prepare a more effective and appropriate deployment plan for the threats of the near future.

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