EVEN though President Bush keeps saying American forces won't leave Iraq until its forces can fight on their own, the United States isn't rushing to give the Iraqi military heavy weapons.
The author's point is clear. We can't get out because we won't equip the Iraqis out of fear the weapons will be used against us. This provides a convenient excuse not to to leave Iraq.
While there is perhaps a little truth to the worry that weapons could be used against us, the main problem is that the Iraqis simply don't need heavy units able to fight invading armies. If we can't handle that right now, the Iraqis sure as heck can't. And while we deter foreign invaders, the Iraqis need good light infantry to defeat the Baathists and jihadis. Mechanized forces are not the best units for the Iraqis to focus on building. We can supply these units since we have them already and they are excellent. Our troops may pull out of the day-to-day fight in time but they will be in Iraq to shield Iraq from invasion until we do build an Iraqi military along conventional lines:
At the same time, the Americans are building at least four semi-permanent military bases that could hold 18,000 troops each. These are usually described as way stations on the eventual route home for the Americans, places where they will stay while ever-more-capable Iraqi troops engage the insurgents on their own. But that will clearly take time. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top military commander in Iraq, when asked this month about how the bases would be used, dismissed the question: "You're talking years away." And if Iraq's politics remain unstable, the bases could offer a continuing rationale for not providing heavier weaponry, since the Americans would still be close by for the Iraqis to rely on.
The idea that we are undermining the ability of the Iraqis to fight in order to keep an excuse to stay in Iraq is ludicrous. Indeed, one mistake of ours after the fall of Baghdad in 2003 was our initial plan to create a 40,000 strong Iraqi army corps that would be the cadre for a regular military rebuilt from the ruins of Saddam's force. We assumed no domestic troubles. When the insurgency got rolling, we needed to scrap that plan in favor of a plan to get light infantry into the fight quickly. We did this with the Iraqi National Guard units that are now part of the army.
So keep in mind this quote from an unnamed American officer in the article and trust that it means you can ignore the thrust of the rest:
"We're trying to build an army to fight the current fight," one American officer said when asked about the Iraqi complaints. "It's too early to start talking about M1A1 tanks, and they don't need helicopters when they have American military support."
And for Pete's sake, the Iraqis hardly need up-to-date anti-tank weapons right now. Unless I missed the news about the Zarqawi mechanized brigade.
Get a grip, people. The Iraqis will eventually have the best equipped and best trained Arab army to ever take the field due to our efforts. But right now they don't need what we already provide and should focus on defeating the insurgency rather than poorly duplicating our forces while failing to provide what we can't. If we were trying to make a carbon copy of our military when the threat is from irregulars and terrorists, I don't have to imagine very hard about the Vietnam comparisons that our press would make. But we aren't, so the press has to pretend there is a crisis or conspiracy or something bad going on.
No conspiracy. We're just doing what makes sense.
