For all the talk about the administration embracing the “Korean model” for a long-term presence in Iraq, Thomas Ricks looks at the future from the military’s perspective.
U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a “post-occupation” troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years.
This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials’ assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose.
This comes on the heels of a report two weeks ago that the White House is “developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year.” It’d be more encouraging if we haven’t been hearing similar rhetoric for years.
Indeed, the same problem exists here. As publius noted today, we’ve seen reports just like Ricks’ for a long while, and none came to fruition.
But just as importantly, what would this “post-occupation” force look like? There’d be 20,000 U.S. troops for security, 10,000 to train Iraqi security forces, at least 10,000 for logistics, and a “small but significant” deployment for counter-terrorism.
This doesn’t exactly sound like an effective way to end an occupation. As Matthew Yglesias noted, “[I]t’s precisely the widespread — and, crucially, accurate — Iraqi perception that US forces aren’t there just to help them out and aren’t planning on leaving that drives the appeal of both Sunni and Shiite nationalist groups that are opposing us.”
