After Iraq elections, US should pull out

Joseph Galloway
Detroit Free Press
10 January 2005

There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there may be only one good way out of the deepening disaster that is Iraq: Hold the elections on Jan. 30, declare victory and begin leaving. Anything less, any more "staying the course," and we're likely doomed to an even bloodier and more costly defeat in a country divided along ethnic and religious fault lines and headed toward civil war.

A large number of Americans, perhaps even a majority, believe that pulling out now would lead to an American defeat that undermines U.S. credibility and endangers the global war on terrorism. They worry it would create either an Afghan-style terrorist haven in Iraq or an anti-American Shiite regime that would only be a new source of instability in the Mideast, a region vital to American interests.

The problem is that there is no way we can win -- defeat the insurgents and install a stable, democratic, friendly government -- and bad things are going to happen anyway. There is no way Americans are willing to pay the price even of stalemate, never mind an unattainable victory. That would mean half a million American soldiers on the ground, maybe more, and a new draft to find enough people for the force. It would mean an escalating drain of hundreds of billions more dollars, and a bloodbath on both sides.

Why can't we win? Because we charged in with false premises and bogus assumptions. Because for every insurgent we kill, two or three more join the cause. Because even our advertised victories -- like Fallujah, where we apparently had to destroy the city in order to save it, or Samarra or Ramadi -- only turned the entire Sunni population against the United States and its Iraqi allies. And in the end, election or no, there is nothing we can do to produce an Iraqi government that will be considered legitimate by the entire population. The Sunnis hate the interim government as an American creation. They will hate any elected government dominated by the Shiite majority. They and a growing number of Shiites will hate us because we are there, because we are an occupying army.

If we learned nothing else from the bitter history of Vietnam it should be that there are places and people who won't accept change and won't quit fighting until even the most powerful nation and army in the world wearies of the killing and dying. The fallout from staying the course will be thousands more American soldiers killed and wounded, an Army so broken that repairs and reconstruction could take a decade or more and a federal budget deficit staggering under the costs of this war.

Consider these stories published last week:

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, commander of the U.S. Army's 200,000 Reserve soldiers, tells his boss, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, that the Reserves are "rapidly degenerating into a broken force." The cause: The war in Iraq and dysfunctional Pentagon and congressional policies. (Baltimore Sun, Jan. 5)

U.S. casualties as of last week: 1,340 killed in action, 10,252 wounded in action and an estimated 12,000 ill or injured. More than half the wounded Americans are hurt so badly they are not able to return to duty.

The Bush administration is preparing to send to Congress a supplemental request for as much as $100 billion to cover unbudgeted costs of the Iraq war this year. That will bring the total cost to American taxpayers of this war to an estimated $230 billion. That against an original Bush administration estimate of total costs of $50 billion to $60 billion.

Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has signed off on a Pentagon document proposing $30 billion in cuts in once untouchable Air Force and Navy weapons projects to help pay for Iraq and help reduce the overall budget deficit.

Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of the Iraq government's new intelligence service, told the Times of London that he estimates there are more than 200,000 insurgents and active supporters opposing American, coalition and government forces in Iraq. "I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq," Shahwani said.

Perhaps the only good things to emerge from this misbegotten war will be an end to our infatuation with high-tech weaponry and our willingness to continue paying for "new" fighter planes and nuclear submarines designed for the Cold War. It would also be good if it rekindles a new appreciation for boots on the ground to win our wars, an end to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's fixation with the kind of transformation that revolves around PowerPoint presentations focused on faster, lighter, cheaper.

As we approach the second anniversary of our invasion of Iraq we need to be discussing and debating what we are gaining, if anything, from this war and what we are losing.

JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.

Copyright c 2005 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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Citation: Joseph Galloway, "After Iraq elections, US should pull out," Detroit Free Press, 10 January 2005.