Pressured in the months before and after his re-election to give a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, President Bush steadfastly refused.
Setting a public goal, he rightly suggested, would only embolden the terrorists, making them think they could wait us out. That makes this week’s comments from Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. military leader in Iraq, all the more puzzling. Casey suggested that a substantial number of the 135,000 troops in Iraq could be withdrawn as early as next spring.
His words surely have comforted many of the military families who nervously sit stateside, praying for their loved ones in Iraq, but they also come during a time in the war when roadside bombs detonate daily, killing thousands of Iraqis, and as insurgents carry out relentless attacks on the fledgling government and security forces.
Daily death totals have been in the double digits most days this month. Most everyone agrees that Iraqis are in no position to defend themselves and that the U.S. can’t pull out the troops until they are. In the fine print, Casey said that, too.
The general spoke with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at his side, and it occurs to us that Casey may have strayed from military caution in order to please the boss. “If the political process continues to go positively, and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going,” he said, “I do believe we’ll still be able to take some fairly substantial reductions after these [upcoming Iraqi] elections in the spring and summer.”
We sure hope he’s right. We expect military leaders to privately set goals about troop withdrawal and try to meet them – it’s part of a successful war plan. But by announcing them publicly, the remarks can change the battlefield tactics for both sides, and the risk seems to outweigh the purpose, which we assume is to assure Iraqis that the U.S. occupation will soon come to an end, and reassure Americans that this dangerous deployment is drawing to a close.
The insurgency, despite Vice President Cheney’s claims that it’s in its last throes, has been successful at strategically selecting goals and meeting them. When U.S. forces try to ramp up Iraq’s security forces, insurgents blow up the men waiting in line to be trained. Once the interim government was formed, they began assassinations. When minority Sunni leaders began participating in the writing of a constitution, the insurgency took dead aim. When Arab countries began to post diplomats, the insurgents took dead aim again.
A report from Gen. Peter Pace, soon to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says only a “small number” of Iraqi forces are capable of facing insurgents without U.S. help. It seems odd for Casey to be laying out an exit timetable with so much yet to be accomplished.
