Disengagement
In a New York Times Op-Ed yesterday, Edward Luttwak describes an exit strategy from Iraq that makes more sense than most. (Luttwak is a very well known military analyst, generally expressing a conservative slant.) He suggests that as soon as the Bush people get over their current infatuation with the surge, they can blame failure on the Iraqis and then begin to withdraw. But he is not talking of just any withdrawal, but what he calls “disengagement”.
Luttwak begins with the observation that American forces are evidently unable to do anything about the violence on the ground. They can reduce it for a while in one area only to have it flare up elsewhere. Our troops are simply far too few and far too ignorant of the enemies they face to be able to accomplish the pacification mission. We do not have enough intelligence capability for effective counterinsurgency and we are not about to obtain it. This being the case, his suggestion is that we phase out our national guard and reservists in Iraq, retaining only our regular forces. These would be given the mission of defending against major attacks, either coming from outside the country or from massed forces within the country. Most of the time, our forces would be restricted to bases, most of which would be located a ways from population centers. The street by street, town by town pacification would be turned over to the Iraqis. They may not do is what we would like them to do, but we will have to put this out of our minds. At least, their goals and methods would be Iraqi, and the results would mirror the balance of power in the country.
In another recent article, it was noted that in spite of considerable effort, the Iraqi airforce is all but nonexistent, a situation that is expected to last for several years. (Much the same can be said of the Iraqi navy.) The article quotes a commentator to the effect that in this part of the world a country without an air force is a “protectorate”. Protectorate has many meanings, but I think one might reasonably use it to label a country under the protection of another, primarily against invasion from outside. What Luttwak appears to be suggesting above is that we define our role in terms of protecting Iraq from major, particularly external, dangers, leaving the sorting out of internal security problems to the Iraqis. Given the terrible carnage in Iraq, this is a harsh decision, but it will be less harsh on American families and little if any harsher on the Iraqis than would be continuing indefinitely with the present approach.
