Withdrawing from Iraq

August 13, 2008

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“We would argue now more than ever that it’s important to set a date because this is the one thing that all of the factions in Iraq agree on, and we need to bring them together,” said Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. On Monday, he spoke at a CAP panel on redeploying troops from Iraq to accompany an updated version of the CAP report, "How to Redeploy: Implementing a Responsible Drawdown of U.S. Forces from Iraq."

Korb’s proposal, laid out in the report, took into account recent developments on the ground to demonstrate that an orderly and safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops is possible and best achieved in the next 8 to 10 months. Korb argued that in order to capitalize on the recent reduction of violence in Iraq, the United States must use the credible threat of a withdrawal as a lever to force political reconciliation.

Troops in the most stable areas, like Al Anbar province, could leave first, leaving a temporary residual presence in northern Iraq which is home to the last remnants of extremists groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq. If a timeline was not established, Korb warned, the United States would be undermining its own gains.

However, the other members of the panel disagreed with some of the main points in the report. Col. T. X. Hammes, a retired member of the United States Marine Corps and the author of The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, agreed that the assertion that a withdrawal would take several years was baseless.

“It won’t take three to four years to take the equipment out of Iraq,” he said. “That’s just not true.” While Hammes agreed with the proposed timeline, he insisted that basing a withdrawal on the conditions on the ground was essential. Operating at the brigade level with phased consolidation would not work with the current information technologies. In addition, Hammes criticized the report for not mentioning other nations and contractors in its analysis. Most of all, he worried about the “biggest threat,” which is a reignited civil war in Iraq.

Lt. Col. John Nagl, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, pointed out the dramatic improvement of the security situation in Iraq. Not only were attacks in Baghdad down to four a day, banks were conducting transactions and half a dozen jewelry stores were open for business.

Despite this progress, Nagl stressed that the Iraqis were not ready to take over security by themselves—something, he claimed, they were willing to admit in private.

“They absolutely want Americans to leave, but not yet, and not soon,” he said. Nagl pointed out that it was the promise of a long-term American security presence that made many Iraqis feel safe enough to side with the United States in the fight against Al Qaeda and other extremist groups. Nevertheless, the Iraqis still face challenges in managing their large bureaucracy. Forty years of neglect of human capital, Nagl said, led to a struggling governmental sector.

Korb contradicted both Nagl and Hammes and argued that as long as American forces remained in Iraq, Iran would work to destabilize the country. In addition, there was no incentive for the Iraqi government to take control of their own affairs as long as a U.S. safety buffer persisted. Violence is down in Iraq, Korb said, and it is time to remove the troops.

In their last statements, Hammes emphasized the disastrous effects of a reignited civil war, which would not only hurt Iraq but also American credibility. If the Sunnis and the Shia start to fight each other, it could drag into other nations in the region and disrupt the flow of oil in the Persian Gulf. Nagl talked about the higher morale of American troops in Iraq.

“The change in attitude is palpable,” he said. “The guys can tell we’re winning.”

For more on this event, please visit the events page.