Of course, 30- to 50 thousand American troops will remain under the president's plan. We'll be needed for training and deterrence in case Iran or Syria want to hit Iraq before they build up their conventional warfighting capabilities. And we'll probably need special forces and supporting arms to help the Iraqis with terrorist threats. I'm sure his base will be outraged that so many of our forces will remain, but I'm glad the president doesn't seem willing to lose a war that we've pretty much won.
All this is consistent with the Phase VII of the fight that I figured would begin by April 2008, that would have the Iraqis in the lead in combat. The Iraq Basra offensive fits nicely with my guesstimate on timing. I'm happy to say that I was overly pessimistic about how this phase would look even as I thought we'd win in the end. But the point remains that we need to win this phase even as we have pulled our forces out of routine combat missions.
And the plan says we'll be out completely by December 2011 per our existing agreement with Iraq. This latter detail will be amended to allow our troops to stay beyond 2011, I dare say.
I hope that our "non-combat" troops will include at least several heavy combat brigade teams to aid in deterrence, even if these troops are called trainers or border guards or base security or something.
And we'll need forces able to move in quickly with prepositioned unit sets in Kuwait and Iraq itself, including perhaps a set in the Kurdish region to reassure everyone that the status quo is safe.
And Air Force elements, too. And I'd like to see a small Marine presence in Anbar since the Anbaris know the Marines the best.
Remember, we have to win on the way out just as much as we needed to win the earlier phases to get to this point. Victory is still the objective. Or it should be, anyway.
UPDATE: Yes indeed, combat brigades will remain:
It is heartening to read that, according to administration leaks, ”Even after August 2010, as many as 50,000 of the 142,000 troops now in Iraq would remain, including some combat units reassigned as ‘Advisory Training Brigades’ or ‘Advisory Assistance Brigades.’ ”
I'm not quite as worried about a commitment to get us down to 50,000 by August 2010. I hope that either it will be safe to do so, or that we'll slow down the pace of withdrawal if we need to. That's what Bush would do. We certainly had hopes at various times in Iraq that we'd draw down troops, but reality led to the scrapping of those projections. I hope that's what Obama will do, too, if necessary. On Iraq, at least, the president seems pragmatic on not wanting to lose a war to satisfy his most rabid base elements. He'll never satisfy them, anyway.
Don't doubt we are still needed even if we aren't fighting. We are working on making Iraqi logistical support function without us, but that will take time--longer than 2011 I dare say.
