Posted on 03/11/2007 8:37:47 PM PDT by jmc1969
American military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters in case the current troop buildup fails or is derailed by Congress.
Such a strategy, based in part on the U.S. experience in El Salvador in the 1980s, is still in the early planning stages and would be adjusted to fit the outcome of the current surge in troop levels, according to military officials and Pentagon consultants who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing future plans.
Such a plan also would be close to recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, of which Gates was a member before his appointment as Defense chief.
A strategy following the El Salvador model would be a dramatic break from President Bush's current policy of committing large numbers of U.S. troops to aggressive counterinsurgency tactics, but it has influential backers within the Pentagon.
"This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence," said a senior Pentagon official, adding that chances of success with a large U.S. force may be diminishing. "You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large U.S. force eventually gets to the point that it is self-defeating."
At the same time, the war has created divisions within the Pentagon. Some support the new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who advocates using more American forces to protect Baghdad neighborhoods, whereas others back the position of Gen. John P. Abizaid, the retiring commander for the Mideast, who favored handing responsibility more quickly to Iraqis.
A shift away from the buildup and toward a more advisor-based strategy would bring the administration more in line with the Iraq Study Group.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Why is this called "a fallback plan"? I thought this was the original plan: train the Iraqis to defend their own new democracy, and we'll leave when they're capable.
I have a fall back plan for living, I plan to keep breathing in and out.
Through my nose, not my mouth like these complete idiots!
Its interesting that the media is now de escalating its metaphors.
We don't hear much Vietnam anymore.
Now we move on to the milder El Salvador metaphor with far less salience and less compelling narrative.
The media is doomed in its war against Bush and our troops.
There has been a fall back strategy lately for the terrorists,it's called leave or die.
Supporting efforts? Supporting what? We disbanded the entire Iraqi Army and it appears still to be incapable of securing its own country. The US Army in Iraq is what needs support.
We have done a pretty poor job at rebuilding their Army as well. At first we didn't think Iraq needed a real Army just a National Guard, because we wanted to keep Iraq weak and from starting anymore wars. But, then we realized we didn't have enough troops to secure the country and keep the other Islamic countries in the region from trying to destabilize it further. So late 2004 we started building a real Iraqi Army.
However, if you look at the numbers the US only wanted a 10 division Iraqi Army so when we maxed out the growth of the Iraqi Army 6-7 months ago we stopped adding troops to the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi hasn't really grown in half a year. It was about 128,000 troops 6 months ago it has about 132,000 troops today. The Pentagon needs to find a clue that the Iraqi Army needs to be more then doubled. Probably to around 350,000 troops.
That could be done in a shorter time then one might think, if the money is provided.
But with the President ignoring them and supporting CENTCOM's buildup they are terrified of facing the choice of failure in Iraq under a democrat president (which would leave them out of power for another decade) or continuing the war, which they will do poorly (which will tear the democrat party apart, extreme anti-war left against its newly elected democrat president, leaving them out of power for another decade).
If it were not so serious, with American lives at risk, it would be funny to watch this play out. But it is serious, and we will not be out of Iraq before the next election, and I hope America does not put its trust in the democrats.
Good analysis. And, of course, the prospect that we could actually fight a war to WIN IT under a democrat president(FDR, Truman) would never ever occur to the dems.
No doubt. Democrats are and always have been ignorant and naive fools. And they kow that they cannot "win" in a "fair" debate. But they are calculating and cunning too. And so they continue to obfuscate with the help of their Leftists masters in the MSM. They surely want a replay of Vietnam, along with an impeached Republican president, as an easy way to victory. They are evil scum. They are always wrong, and always dangerous. God help us.
And after we do this, the RATs will implement their 'surrender strategy': cut off aid, let Iraq fall to the terrorists, and blame it all on Bush.
There is a problem with the word "WIN". If there is one car bomb or mortar attack in a week then Iraq will be called a failure. We can't count on the MSM to ever call the war any thing but a failure.
So what is winning? For the MSM is removing all the troops and letting Iraq go to he@@.
So we will never be able to call Iraq a win even many years from now.
The main reason to go into Iraq was to make a killing field to fight AQ and this has worked well. Some say we have killed 45,000 AK fighters. They have come from all over the world (USA, France, UK, and Canada.) to fight and most have died.
As soon as the US started the surge I knew the troop levels would be much less than the current 120,000 that we had deployed.
We don't have enough troops to keep the numbers at 160,000 so when it come time to rotate the troops many have had three tours already and the military does not really want to have solders fighting more than 200 days in two years.
I would guess in a year from now we will have only 40.000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq. We may deploy a few thousand more to Afghanistan.
The problem is the dems wanting every last american out of Iraq.
I guess then that Israel is loosing the war in Israel, because there is more than a terrorist attack a week. More like 15 or so a day.
Oh wait, Israel is not at war, the US State department Liberals have declared a Peace instead.
Whew, glad that is settled. I can just ignore the blood and guts then. The Liberals have saved the day.
I don't really think this is the case, for no other reason than the fact that President Bush is going to absorb the entire load of blame for Iraq. Even if the Democrats inherit Iraq, and begin an immediate pullout, what disaster may come will still be pinned on President Bush.
In the minds of most Americans, anyway, it's a done deal. Iraq, win or lose, is President Bush's legacy alone.
I can only hope this is true. This is the plan that I've been advocating for some time. It has two effects, the first being to remove the U.S. presence out of the Iraqi bloodstream, and the second is that SOCOM would be running the show. That will whittle down Big Army's incompetent, bureaucratic influence, and allow the SOF community to use their flexible, decentralized methods to full effect.
We don't need 120k troops in Iraq, and we don't need 150k. We need closer to 50k, in the right places, builing stregth behind the scenes, and acting as a trump card for the Iraqi military. We need to end this pointless presence patrolling, and put the onus on the Iraqis to defend themselves. They're certainly capable of it, we just need to take off the training wheels and force them to improve their game.
Doing the right thing here may look like we're retreating, and that fear has been what's kept us doing the wrong thing for years. We're so afraid of giving the enemy a propaganda victory that we're cheating ourselves of a real one. It's time we got over that and admitted that we can't occupy Iraq the way we're trying. We can rebuild Iraq from the bottom up, not the top down, and it's time we got at it.
Zarqawi sadly found a way to make that plan impossible.
Why are suicide bombers mass slaughtering Shia today? To provoke the Shia to mass murder Sunnis which as Saudi Arabia itself told Cheney they would not allow and if the US withdrawls and leaves the Sunnis to be slaugtered by the Shia the Saudis will get the entire Arab world to intervene to help the Sunnis.
The Saudis aren't doing this because they care about the Arab Sunnis, they are doing this because they rightly fear Iraq is going to be used as a base by Iran and its proxy's to attack the Kingdom.
If this was a classical insurgency your plan which was also Abizaid's plan would work. Thanks to Zarqawi's strategy which al-Qaeda in Iraq is using to this day that strategy will simply result in a real civil war in Iraq. We need our troops there to hold back the Shia from being prevoked by al-Qaeda incredible outrages.
Ted Koppel basically phrased this as a question (Effect of politics on "The Long War"?)to General Abizaid on Koppel's Discovery special last night. Abizaid basically said that partisan politics (he seemed to me to be implying "Democrat" politics) would not determine whether the war would end, "because the enemy has vote" and the enemy will wage war. A war that we will end up fighting.
As I recall, Koppel had also emphasized Abizaid's words on an appearance on "Meet the Depressed" earlier in the day. The point - The WOT or "The Long War", or whatever you call it CANNOT be ended by the Democrats by achieving any number of votes in Congress, because their votes will be countered by our enemy, who wants war and will wage it.
The Democrats remind one of Chamberlain, who failed to realize that, despite ANY efforts on his part, only Hitler would ultimately decide war or peace.
"Churchill told the group that the cabinet had demanded "a firm stand" on Chamberlain’s part, insisting on German demobilization, supervision of the Sudetenland transfer by an international commission, a refusal to discuss Polish or Hungarian claims on Czech territory, and a German guarantee of the new Czech borders. Almost in chorus, his guests said: "But Hitler will never accept such terms!" Winston replied, "In that case, Chamberlain will return tonight and we shall have war." "
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=688
This country may be getting the wrong idea from our Vietnam experience, where we left and the NVA didn't bother us any more. That's not the case now.
IMHO - both the General's point and Koppel's point is that many Americans believe that the war news they are tired of can be ended by Democratic Party call for "Peace" but that is a fool's wish. Our enemy is committed: There WILL be war.
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