The short and sweet of it. UPI’s Martin Walker on the troop strength issue …
Quite apart from issues of Arab resentment, religion and the remaining bands of Saddam Hussein loyalists, there is one simple reason why the stabilization of Iraq is proving so frustratingly difficult. By comparison with other similar peace-keeping missions in recent years, the place is very seriously under-policed.
Consider the Balkans. In proportion to their populations, three times as many troops were deployed in Kosovo as in Iraq, and in Bosnia twice as many. By Kosovo standards, there ought to be more than half a million troops in Iraq. But maintaining 180,000 British and American troops in Iraq is putting intense strain on the military manpower of both countries. There is no serious prospect of their deploying any more. Reinforcement will have to come from other countries — and in far greater numbers than the 70 Ukrainian soldiers who flew in Sunday.
On a related note, let’s remember that the small omissions are often the most revealing.
In a new article in The Weekly Standard Reuel Marc Gerecht argues against the conventional wisdom that we need to bring in allied troops and assistance to help stabilize and reconstruct Iraq (“Help Not Wanted“). At the front of the article Gerecht rattles off several examples of establishment nay-sayers who argue that we can’t or shouldn’t accomplish the job alone. The first of those Gerecht mentions is “a recent post-conflict reconstruction report issued under the auspices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”
Does that cover all the facts? Not exactly. That report did go out on CSIS letterhead. But it was requested by and completed at the behest of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld. Somehow that seems like a significant detail.
