“Withdrawing troops from Iraq is no longer seen as an option.”
By amba | Related entries in Elections, General Politics, Military, WarWhat??
By the generals running the war, says The New York Times.
In the fall of 2005, the generals running the Iraq war told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a gradual withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was imperative.
The American troop presence, Gen. John P. Abizaid and Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said at the time, was stoking the insurgency, fostering dependency among the Iraqi security forces and proving counterproductive for what General Abizaid has called “The Long War� against Islamic radicalism.
This week, General Abizaid, chief of the United States Central Command, told the same committee that American forces may be all that is preventing full-scale civil war in Iraq, so a phased troop withdrawal would be a mistake. What has changed, military experts and intelligence officials say, is that the insurgency of Baathists and foreign jihadists is no longer the greatest enemy the United States faces in Iraq. The biggest danger now, they say, is that violence between Shiites and Sunnis could destroy Iraq’s government and spill across the Middle East.
This is really interesting. The Democrats have rejected John Murtha as House Majority Leader, an implicit rebuke to Speaker Pelosi’s clear antiwar views (as well as to Rep. Murtha’s ethics troubles) and in a sense a replay of Lieberman’s victory over Lamont. One sizable contingent of Democratic voters were voting specifically for an end to the war, but it was the centrist “Blue Dog” Democrats who put the party over the top. Centrists of both parties seem to be leaning not so much towards “Let’s change course and leave” as towards “Let’s change course and win,” or at least give it a smart, serious try before giving up. Now the generals are saying that troop levels not only can’t go down yet, but they may need to go up:
A unit of about 2,200 marines that had been aboard naval warships in the Persian Gulf has begun moving into Anbar Province, the restive Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad. [...]
On Friday, the Pentagon also announced a new set of deployment orders for troops that will enter Iraq early in 2007, most for yearlong combat tours.
American commanders had hoped by this point to be deploying fewer combat brigades into Iraq than the number rotating out, but the Pentagon is now planning to keep a base level of about 141,000 troops in the country, with the possibility of “surging� more troops as needed.
The question is whether a majority of midterm voters will feel betrayed (we know some will) or vindicated and inspired by this shift.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 and is filed under Elections, General Politics, Military, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 19th, 2006 at 11:24 am
I have changed my opinion on he subject of troop levels. At one time I thought that we had a chance of putting down the insurgency with more troops and a concentrated effort. I now feel that time has passed, the cycle of violence and he desire for revenge has made any attempt of reconciliation to the point of Iraqi citizens trusting the Iraqi government fruitless. From what I been reading over one million Iraqis have moved to escape the violence, that means the lines are drawn and a split of the country is inevitable. We can only keep a lid on things, but for how long? Eventually we have to face up to the fact that this country is no longer viable.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
What drives voters to vote for something or someone is not as simple as what pundits like the make. It’s amazing how talking heads like to think that people are simpletons.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
“This is really interesting. The Democrats have rejected John Murtha as House Majority Leader, an implicit rebuke to Speaker Pelosi’s clear antiwar views (as well as to Rep. Murtha’s ethics troubles) and in a sense a replay of Lieberman’s victory over Lamont.”
You are joking right? Murtha lost the run because Hoyer was well known to be a far better fund raiser, had the support of freshman and many established members because of his fund raiser and didn’t have the visible ethics taint of Murtha. Your assumption that the typical lack of goose stepping synchronization demonstrated by Republicans not existing in Democrats to be commentary on anti-war or pro-war leanings is wingnut pr0n.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Oh and as for Liberman vs Lamont. That was a matter of a split democrat party vote with Liberman winning because he reviving basically every Republican vote worth a damn because the Republicans threw their own candidate to the wolves. Liberman vs Lamont had little to do with the war and more to do with Lieberman’s willingness to suck up to the White House in public and trash his fellow party members.
If a Republican did that to other Republicans his party would have made damn sure he’d be found under the wheels of some bus.