There’s a lot of news today. But don’t miss this article in the Post about the mechanics and possible consequences of withdrawal. The piece surveys a lot of interesting ground. And I’ll just try to touch on some of the highlights, if that’s the right word for it.
One point is the divergence between war gaming of a withdrawal from Iraq being done in the White House press office and in the Pentagon. The idea that Iraq will be taken over by al Qaida doesn’t even come up in the military’s thinking. Their war-gaming focuses on civil war, partition and possible intervention by neighboring states — no picnic, but not sufficiently threatening to the American public to be useful to the White House.
Another daunting point centers on the purely logistical difficulties of getting out. The situation in a destabilized country can change very quickly once the word gets out that the occupying power is pulling out. There are some harrowing examples from the Soviet pull-out from Afghanistan, particularly cases where they literally had to fight their way out of certain areas. A key issue here is that when you figure not just how many people but how much equipment the US has in Iraq you can’t just airlift everything out.
To me this is an argument not to remain in denial for so long that we literally have no choice but to get out quickly. We still have time to manage a phased withdrawal which is integrated with a political plan. Not clear whether that will be the case in a year when we will no longer be able to sustain our current deployment.
