Not whether, but how, to withdraw

The home front

Nov 24th 2005 WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

As the war in Iraq grows ever less popular, new thinking at last is in the air

THERE was plenty on President George Bush's plate during his trip to Asia, from discussing religious freedom with China's leaders to drinking fermented mares' milk in Mongolia. But events back home kept distracting him. There's “an important debate underway back in Washington about the way forward in Iraq,” he told reporters in Beijing on November 20th. Indeed there is.

The latest storm broke after John Murtha, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, said it was “time to bring [the troops] home”. In a passionate speech delivered on November 17th, he argued that American forces have “become a catalyst for violence” and are impeding progress towards stability. Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists are “united against US forces”, he said. Iraq's fledgling security forces will only be “incentivised to take control” if they are “put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy”. He later clarified that he expected a pull-out to take about six months.

Mr Murtha's outburst started a discussion in which neither Republicans nor Democrats are sure of their ground. The administration's first instinct was to attack Mr Murtha. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said it was “baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”

Someone must have realised the foolhardiness of getting personal about a man who won a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam. Especially since Mr Murtha, now in his 70s, took the trouble of visiting Iraq's Anbar province—where the insurgency is at its roughest—before making his speech. When Mr Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney later stood up to rebut the congressman, they started by acknowledging that he was a patriot.

But not, they suggested, a wise man. Mr Cheney made the case most forcefully, in a speech on November 21st. “It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilised world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone.” In fact, he added, “such a retreat would convince the terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder and blackmail.”

Mr Cheney's argument has undeniable logic. If America were to “cut and run”, to use the shorthand that hawks in Washington always apply to their opponents' plans, al-Qaeda would indeed regard it as a victory. Even just talking about withdrawal emboldens the enemy, argues Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. “Murtha's comments have gotten Americans killed,” he says, “They've convinced the terrorists they are on the right track.” A sudden dash for the exit, adds Mr Rubin, would also warn all current and future allies that they could not trust America.

On the other hand, Mr Murtha's opposing argument is also logical. While some of the insurgents are fighting for a global caliphate, and some to maintain the supremacy of the Sunni minority, others are doing so because they resent the presence of 160,000 American troops in their country, or because those troops have killed or humiliated someone dear to them. The first group would doubtless be inspired to greater violence by an American withdrawal, but the last probably would not.

Mr Murtha's other point—that having the world's greatest army protecting it reduces the Iraqi government's incentive to protect itself—also makes sense. American protection may also reduce the urgency to create a political system in Iraq that can stand on its own. The question therefore is not whether America should eventually reduce its forces in Iraq, but how to ensure that the Iraqi security forces “stand up” as America “stands down”.

That has always been Mr Bush's line, but with no firm details. This week, however, some concrete numbers started to be tossed around. On November 20th, Donald Rumsfeld, Mr Bush's defence secretary, said that once Iraq's December 15th elections are safely past, he plans to withdraw some 20,000 troops. (This, be it noted, was not far off the number of extra troops deployed to police the elections.) On November 22nd, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, told Fox News that since Iraqi forces were getting “more and more capable”, she did “not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now for very much longer.”

The next day, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon had set benchmarks for the circumstances under which troops could be withdrawn, and that under a “moderately optimistic” scenario, the number could be reduced by about a third, to 100,000, by the end of 2006.

How all this will play with the American public is tricky to predict. Some 54% of Americans think the war was a mistake, and only 32% expect it to result in a stable and reasonably democratic Iraq. John Mueller, a professor of politics at Ohio State University, pointed out in a recent column that support for the Iraq war after 2,000 American deaths is as low as it was for the Vietnam war after ten times as many. Either Americans have grown less tolerant of casualties, or they doubt that the war on terror is as important as the struggle against communism was.

But opposition to the war does not translate directly into support for immediate withdrawal. Only about a fifth of Americans favour this. Most would like to see the troops pulled home over a longer period, presumably because they understand that simply letting Iraq collapse would have consequences.

Letting South Vietnam collapse, noted Melvin Laird, secretary of defence under Richard Nixon, in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, resulted in 2m refugees, 65,000 executions and 250,000 people sent to re-education camps. Gloomily, he said he expected no better in Iraq, implying that Iraq's government would merely fold if America retreated.

Politically, the effect of the Iraq row is milder than it might have been. Neither Mr Bush nor Mr Cheney is running for re-election, so both men are insulated, up to a point, against public opinion. And although there are mid-term elections next year and a guaranteed change of commander-in-chief in 2008, few candidates want to be seen as quitters. This was the background to the vote last week that followed Mr Murtha's bombshell. In the House, Republicans called a vote on whether to pull out the troops immediately, in order, they said, to force the Democrats to stand and be counted. Only the fringiest Democrats could back such a motion; it failed by 403 votes to three.

Earlier, in the Senate, cooler heads had passed by 79-19 a bipartisan motion calling on the president to provide quarterly reports on the transfer of responsibility for Iraq's security to Iraqis. Republicans backing the motion said it merely reaffirmed Mr Bush's current policy; Democrats said it was meant to improve it. Nay-voters were split between Republicans who thought it undermined the president, and Democrats who thought it let him off the hook.

As things stand, Iraq is likely to hurt the Republicans quite badly in 2006, though it may not hand control of Congress to the Democrats. As for the presidential poll of 2008, all speculation is just that.

Among potential Republican candidates, Senators John McCain and Chuck Hagel both argue that America should send more troops to defeat the insurgency. Democratic presidential wannabes, meanwhile, mostly wax eloquent on how Mr Bush misled the country into the war and bungled its execution, but have less to say about what America should do now. Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold, plus former vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, all propose gradual reductions in troop levels. Senator Hillary Clinton is hedging artfully.

Senator Joe Biden offers a more original Democratic proposal. This week, he urged greater involvement by America's allies and Iraq's neighbours in cajoling Iraqi Shias, Kurds and Sunni Arabs to forge a political consensus. He also argued, rather airily, for greater involvement by Iraqi firms in reconstruction projects, and a different mix of American forces in Iraq, with fewer troops but more embedded trainers, civil-affairs units and special forces.

All of which is food for thought. But for now, the responsibility for fixing Iraq lies with those who broke it.

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.