I ask because it seems (to me) that exposing your hand (in poker) is usually not a wise thing. In Iraq, I can see the various factions thinking: “gee, let’s just tone things down, and buy more weapons-we will be ready in August 2010-when the acurssed crusaders leave”. If you are an Iraqi soldier, you have to worry about what might happen to you. If you are a Kurd-get ready to open Rep. of Kurdistan embassies around the world. and if you are a Sunni-stockpile bombs against the hated shia.
Would it have been wiser to say nothing, and just go ahead with withdrawal?
They can’t just pack up and move out in the middle of the night. I would guess this will take months to bring back all the personnel and equipment. Withdrawal will be pretty obvious.
Well, if the bad guys decide to hold fast and do nothing until the pullout date, it would seem to me that the Iraqi military would also be given an opportunity to train and equip themselves for that date, as well. That seems like a good thing.
Here’s the one thing I’ve always wondered about when it came to us not wanting to reveal when we’re leaving. Doesn’t Iraq have its own damn military?
If we announce when we’re leaving, the enemy will just wait till that date, and then swoop in. Doesn’t Iraq have its own damn military?
Also, with the “Awakening” former insurgents are fighting against the Taliban. So, either after all these years of building the Iraqi military, is it either:
- They still don’t have their s**t togeather?
- We don’t take them into account and are being Americentric in thinking that we’re the only ones who are capable of protecting Iraq?
War is not poker, so yes, it is wise of Obama to tell America that he is keeping his campaign promise. The past eight years notwithstanding, Americans like to know that their leader’s word is good.
I also don’t buy that a surprise departure would be of some sort of strategic/tactical advantage in this sort of situation.
And not give the Iraqi government or military any time to prepare for the transition? That seems like a recipe for chaos.
Yeah it’ll be helpful if his word is good in foreign policy since he’s totally going to shaft his word on economic policy. 
Well to be fair, he always was a bit further to the right on that many were willing to believe.
Not really; they have a bunch of people who are willing to put on a uniform for food, or who want to get training and weapons for whatever faction they belong to. But you aren’t going to find many people willing to actually fight for a collaborationist goverment. The patriots are going to be the ones fighting against us.
As to the Sunni Awakening, it is more properly termed the Sunni Payoff. We flat out said “How much cash will it take to get you to stop shooting at us?” They named a figure, and we paid. What was that figure? Shhh. National security.
Are we going to continue the payments, or is the Shia dominated Iraqi government expected to? Dunno.
But the question of tipping our hand is moot, there hasn’t been any question about our leaving for some time now.
We’ve accomplished our mission in Iraq, there is enough stability there now that it’s not going to fall apart just because we leave. Plus the Iraqi government actually said they wanted us out not too long after August of 2010 (they said no later than 2011) so it was going to happen around this time in any case.
Ever since the success of the surge there has been no real doubt we’d be leaving at some point, the fact that the Iraqi government voted us out by 2011 pretty much showed that Iraq was going to be alright.
If you notice, once Obama had the nomination sewn up a lot of the Iraq rhetoric went to the wayside–this is because it was rapidly becoming apparent that the previously widely popular opinion that we were mired in a “lost war” had become more or less untrue.
It took Bush a long time to get it right in Iraq, and his ineptitude in this regard is inexcusable in light of the fact that military commanders had been telling Rumsfeld since 2003 what would be necessary to insure post-war security but ultimately Bush did get it right and that’s the reason things are going so well in Iraq right now.
Not one representing all of what used to be Iraq, not really. It’s pretty much a Shiite militia.
To a large degree, the “Iraqi Army” IS the enemy. We’ve paid, trained, and armed people by day who have gone out and tried to kill us by night.
The idea that there have been only 2 sides, only 1 group “our friends” and only 1 group “our enemies”, has been a colossal misconception, never mind that it guided Bush for years.
Both.
What we’ve done is to uphold and confirm control of the various regions by their particular ethnic/religious warlords/militias. The killings are down because we aren’t trying to impose Shiite control on Sunni or Kurdish areas in the name of a pipedream of national unity anymore. We’ve given the likeliest-looking leaders arms, money, and political support, in return for which they have stopped seeing as their enemy.
The result longer term is that we’ve enforced the partitioning of the country, preventing the unity we have claimed to be fighting for. It may still get violent, but it does seem more likely that the Shiastan region will get dominated by Iran, the Sunnistan region will be unstable but stabilizing, and Kurdistan will become even more de facto independent than it has been since Bush 1’s no-fly zones.
Yes, partitioning was the least bad option, and one I for one advocated - give Petraeus credit for realizing it, and more for doing it while having to reassure Bush that peace and unification were not only the necessary outcome but the actual goals. There is a large segment of the political population who has boiled all that down, or ignored it, in the cause of saying simply “fewer killings = the surge worked”.
What I’m actually more interested in is the residual force that President Obama wants to leave behind. The White House has bandied about the number of 50,000 or so troops who would remain in an advisory role after the main pullout (I still presume this 50,000 will be gone by Dec. of 2011 since that is the hard limit on how long we can stay there.)
The congressional Democrats are opposed to leaving this residual force but obviously the President and his military advisers believe it is sound military strategy. To be honest the President has let the congressional Democrats push him around a good bit so far–he can’t allow Pelosi to set our military policies, that is a clear responsibility and power of the executive. There is also the wider truth that the congressional Democrats owe their healthy majorities in both houses in large part to riding his coattails on election day (obviously years of inept Republican leadership contribute to this as well.) He’s the one who is honestly in a greater position of power here and he should start exploiting that.
Banshees like Pelosi will pretty much use President Obama like a door mat if he takes his natural tendency towards conciliation too far.
Everyone whose opinion matters believes the surge worked.
What happened to the indignant cries that “setting a date certain” would be tantamount to treason and surrender?
On a basis other than what I just described? :dubious:
Actually, the one thing I’m most surprised about is that the withdrawal plan seems to be going over okay with Republicans. McCain said he’d rather lose an election than lose a war, and today he said that Obama’s plan is “reasonable” and that he’s “cautiously optimistic… [it] will lead to success.”
McCain pounded on Obama that his plan for Iraq was doomed to fail, and then when Obama announces it, the only substantive change seeming to be another 3 months of withdrawal time, suddenly it’s a pretty good plan?
What is up with that?
The lemmings further back in the herd have now seen the leaders go over the cliff.
Or you could say there’s an Awakening movement among the Republicans too, not just the Sunni.