Meehan on a Responsible Iraq Policy

Today I attended a briefing at Brookings by Rep. Marty Meehan on his newly-released plan for an exit strategy in Iraq.  I haven't read his whole white paper, which isn't online, but glancing over it, it looked quite good.  Below are my notes from the event:

Meehan opened with the argument that the administration has no endgame for Iraq. As a result, he argued, Congress is going to have to take the lead on crafting a strategy going forward. The Bush Administration's strategy has been more soldiers, more money, more violence, in his view. He does not foresee this policy as yielding different results than it has thus far, at which point he pointed to the negative trends illustrated by Brookings' Iraq Index. He complained that each "milestone" has been a ruse, from the capture of Saddam, to the nominal transfer of sovereignty, to Fallujah, to the elections. He also argued that the U.S. presence is fueling the insurgency, as evidenced by plummeting poll ratings as recently reported.

In Meehan's view, the goal of withdrawal should be stated openly and communicated in concert with either the Allawi government or the government that will be elected on Sunday, that we have benchmarks for leaving, and that we have no intentions of occupying Iraq permanently. He does believe that the U.S. will have to continue playing a large role in humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, and that we will have to leave a smaller contingency of forces behind -- he used the figure 30,000 -- to use in case of any major disaster or flare-up that threatened America's interest or to plunge Iraq into failed state, pre-Taliban Afghanistan status.

Meehan closed by noting that "the national conversation on Iraq needs more realism, and to look more to the future," as opposed to recriminations about past decisions. Throughout his presentation he advocated a bipartisan consensus on what we will need in order to bring our troops home from Iraq. In his view, we have set political milestones and timetables -- the security people should have metrics as well.

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Bill Kristol then presented his thoughts on Meehan's proposal. In Kristol's words there should be "no talk of withdrawal, announced or unnanounced, any time in the foreseeable future." Kristol argued that the insurgency is not, in fact, anti-American; in his view, it is anti-Iraqi, and threatens to take over Iraq if we were to leave. He was vicious in his criticism of Rumsfeld, noting that Rumsfeld "never believed in the nation-building" in Iraq, and that Rumsfeld was always opposed to "doing it right." He noted that he is PNG at the Pentagon, and has not spoken to Wolfowitz in 3-4 months.

Grudgingly, he conceded that if an Iraqi government asked us to leave, we would have to "work with them on that," but he stopped short of agreeing that at that point we would have to promptly leave. He heaped praise on the president's inaugural address, and expressed his belief that the American people now recognize that they need to put number one priority on what happens in "all those far-flung corners of the globe."

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Peter Khalil, formerly an advisor to the CPA on training Iraqi forces and a fellow at Brookings, went forward with some empirical data on Iraqi forces and his critique of Meehan's withdrawal plan. He confirmed Condi Rice's claims that there are, in fact, 120,000 Iraqi troops in existence. The problem, in Khalil's view, is that they are the wrong type of troops for fighting an insurgency, and that many of them are poorly trained. He praised Gen. Petraeus, and seemed to believe that Petraeus was getting things on track in terms of training the Iraqi forces.

Iraq currently has 15-20,000 troops who are trained particularly for border security. There are roughly 40,000 Iraqi National Guardsmen, roughly 8,000 Army troops, 50,000 local police, and 3-4,000 highly trained internal security forces who are particularly geared to counterinsurgency fighting. He said that in addition to the internal security forces, of the 8,000 army forces, roughly 2,400 of them are trained as special forces and counterterrorism units, and could be used to fight the insurgents, although he was not excited about the notion of using the Army to suppress a domestic insurrection.

His view was that 33 battalions (I have no idea where that figure came from, but he said that in Iraq, a battalion is roughly 800 men) could, in fact, likely be raised within the 12-18 month timeframe that Rep. Meehan outlined as an acceptable withdrawal timeline. These forces, in Khalil's view, could take on the insurgency effectively, and would provide some breathing room for a meaningful American drawdown.

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I asked a question during the proceedings of Bill Kristol, since in response to a question about the occupation fueling the insurgency, he admitted that "in some ways, what we have is the worst of both worlds." I told him that I understood that he and others would like to have lots more troops in Iraq, and that I imagined Iraq may look different if we had 300,000 or 400,000 troops there. But I asked him, since we don't have that kind of an army to deploy, why he would continue to advocate a policy he ackowledges as the "worst of both worlds" in the sense of not being able to impose its will on the Iraqi people while simultaneously fueling the fires of nationalism and resistance. He replied by saying that he didn't mean it was really the worst of both worlds, that maybe that was too extreme a rhetorical flourish, but that it illustrates the absurdity of having a "pre-9/11" military, diplomatic corps, intelligence community, et cetera, serving the ends of a "post-9/11" foreign policy.

Update:  The Washington Times reports on the event with a disingenuous article including this internally contradictory paragraph:

Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., based his [withdrawal] plan on the belief that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is the main force feeding the insurgency. If U.S. troops were no longer there, the foot soldiers of the rebellion would have no reason to continue fighting.

Right, so if he said that it's the "main" force feeding the insurgency, removing that "main" force would not leave nothing behind.  Main implies that there are other factors as well, but that they are not as compelling as the "main" factor.  God, the Washington Times is an awful paper.

Update II:  Spencer Ackerman has his thoughts on the event here.  I believe the discrepancy between his and my recollections of Kristol's response to "What if the Iraqis ask us to leave?" is because the topic came up several times.  I recall Kristol hedging and choosing his words carefully, but I suppose when it came up a different time I may have been spacing out and someone may have pinned him down.

Comments

[EYates]

The thing is, that the US doesn't want an "exit strategy". We're there to position ourselves in the region long into the future and to secure the area's resources. Whichever Iraqi group wins this current free for all power play will accommodate the U.S. That's what the U.S. is literally banking on. What exit strategy? The current strategy being developed is an occupation strategy, fueled by dollars and arms.

[ILANA FREEDMAN]

Guest Op Ed
The Dangers of Withdrawal in Iraq
By Ilana Freedman

In the hours following the historic elections in Iraq, Congressman Marty Meehan joined Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to call for the start of a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Meehan’s call was contained in a 20-page white paper, released on January 25th (although it has not been made available to the public). In his paper, Meehan called for the “laying out a timetable for a phased withdrawal.” He recommended that the United States announce a specific program for reducing the American troop presence in Iraq from 150,000 to as few as 30,000 by the middle of next year.
It is amazing to me that Congressman Meehan, who is not only a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, but who also serves as the Ranking Member of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, knows so little about terrorism.
The most dangerous thing we can do right now is to inform the enemy of our intentions to leave the battlefield. We can only put Iraqis at greater risk than they already face by announcing our withdrawal plans at the moment of their national rebirth. By doing so, we give the terrorists the opportunity to quietly build their strength and wait for our departure before mounting new and stronger attacks on the fledgling democracy. This is a modus operandi that we have seen many times in other places, notably in Gaza and the West Bank. The results are always the same - given the opportunity to plan and regroup, the terrorists always return in greater force with more advanced weaponry and intense resolve. The outcome is always the death of more civilians.
Meehan said, "I believe that the insurgency is really fueled by the fact that we are seen as an occupier," and stated categorically “the fact that for the most part, we are fighting not foreign terrorists or former regime loyalists but indigenous factions within Iraq who have united against us. It’s a native insurgency.” He is wrong on both counts.
The so-called “insurgency” is in reality a terrorist movement whose purpose is to create civil unrest and chaos throughout Iraq. U.S. military officials have identified two major groups: a smaller group of jihadists, many of whom began pouring over the Syrian and Iranian borders into Iraq in the spring of 2003. They came from all over the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and even Europe and the United States and are led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda leader who came to Iraq with the blessings of Saddam Hussein when he was still in power.
The second, larger group is called the "New Regional Command," whose members are former Baathist Party officials and Saddam Hussein loyalists. They are most likely led by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, former vice president of Saddam's revolutionary council. (He is best known as the “King of Clubs” in the famous deck of cards that showed the coalition’s list of most wanted Iraqis.)
These two groups have used car bombs, rockets, and suicide bombs, targeting not only Americans but Iraqi civilians, clerics, even Iraqi children at school. They have kidnapped, assaulted, and brutally murdered not only Americans, but also British, Koreans, Italians, Japanese, as well as Iraqis. Their battle is with law and order and they will stop at nothing make their point, showing total disregard for the lives of the innocent.
Appearing on Ted Koppel’s Nightline Town Meeting on January 27, Congressman Meehan said, “Our policy in Iraq is failing.” But on Sunday, January 30, 2005 the Iraqi people proved him wrong. The people of Iraq spoke, for the first time in fifty years, in a voice that was loud and clear - they chose democracy. This would never have occurred without America’s strong political and economic support for the emergence of a democratic process in Iraq, and it would not have happened without the presence of a strong American military machine on the ground. It could never have been the outcome of a “failing policy”.
Meehan said, "Iraqis have grown tired of an occupation that has provided them neither security nor meaningful sovereignty." But what could be more meaningful than free elections and an exuberant population establishing their own sovereignty through the power of free elections?
Indiscriminately bombing local civilians is not the action of a “native insurgency”. And coming out to vote by the millions at great personal risk is not the action of people who feel they are occupied.
Iraq has a long way to go to achieve the independence and freedom from fear for which they yearn. The acts of terror will not stop just because the elections have taken place, and a publicly programmed withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will do far more harm than good. It will take continued show of moral courage to face down this enemy and the Iraqis will need the continued help and support of those who have already put their own lives at risk so that Iraq can become truly free.

Ilana Freedman is a specialist in counter-terrorism and Managing Partner of Gerard Group International LLC in Tyngsborough.