Longing for No-Drama Obama? Check Out Iraq Drawdown. Posted by Heather Hurlburt

There's plenty of drama in Iraq these days, surrounding the upcoming elections and the banning and unbanning, de-Baathification and un-de-Baathification of candidates, the emergence of new political coalitions. 

But on Sunday, Secretary Clinton announced that the US troop presence has fallen below 100,000,That is almost a 25% cut in seven months -- and a faster pace of withdrawal than the Administration announced last summer, when the commander of US forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, said the US intended to get to 120,000 by the end of the year. 

Did you even look up from the Nordic combined final to notice?  I didn't think so.  But don't feel bad.  Iraqis, as noted above, were too busy running their national affairs to be very concerned.  Even Dick Cheney  couldn't squeeze a word about Iraq into his politicized Sunday show litany.

(*An ironic note:  we are now heading, in 2010, toward the 30-50,000 troop level that Bush Administration pre-war planning predicted we would hit in 2003.)

It's fun to be snarky about this on a blog.  And of course the Administration is properly concerned not to draw too much attention to the troop moves in order not to embolden either its domestic or regional opponents.  In fact, making the announcement in a regional forum, as Secretary Clinton did in Doha, is just right -- because the regional Arab and Muslim audience is the one that most needs to see the US keeping our word and withdrawing troops from a Muslim country.

But it's worth asking what is wrong with the way we report on and debate national security here at home.  A leader can draw endless praise for starting a war, or escalating one.  Students of history and politics know that it's considerably more difficult to end a war than to begin one (this is where I regret the inadequacy of my education and my inability to provide a suitable reference from antiquity, but the French and Americans in Indochina alone ought to make the point).  We were told ad nauseam from 2005 onwards that pulling out would have unthinkable consequences for stability in and around Iraq, for human rights, and for the safety of our troops.  I don't at all wish to downplay the uncertainty surrounding the Iraqi elections, and the potential negative consequences.  But I have not seen a single arugment which suggests that more troops could have prevented or solved the problem -- or, more importantly, that Iraqis want it to be solved by American intervention. (Check out Marc Lynch on this.) I also realize that the most significant danger point for our troops lies ahead, when we really have gotten down to that mythical 30,000-50,000 level.

Wouldn't it be good to see endless columns of Washington Post tick-tock of the decisions to disengage, and how Iraqis have stood up at each one?  Or to see a fight break out between CAP and FPI over who deserves more credit for setting the foundations of this sage withdrawal policy, Obama (for demanding it for 4+ years) or George W. Bush (for negotiating the status of forces agreement that set it in motion)? 

In sum - we need a national security discussion which recognizes that wars have an end as well as a beginning, though not many will end with surrenders on battleships.  We need to accustom ourselves and our public debate to different ways the end may look, as well as the beginning.  And we need to praise and value leaders who have the wisdom and foresight and, yep, bravery, because it takes that too, to plan for the ending.  For it is likely that not all of this withdrawal, or the one from Afghanistan that will come in five or ten years, will be this "easy."  

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This article's an embarrassment and that includes the dismissive opening where the assault on democracy is treated so casually. It also includes the grave ignorance of the author who apparently is unaware that Nouri al-Maliki sent Iraqi troops into Tikrit last week to storm a provincial council and the US military has had to protect the council.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html

Reading is apparently hard but blindly cheer leading Barack Obama and his continued war so much easier.

Fact: He promised one brigade a month would be brought home. Didn't happen. Still hasn't happened.

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