Violence against civilians and U.S. and Iraqi military forces dropped to some of the lowest levels of the war in May even as Iraqi troops are leading offensives in three major cities.
That drop, combined with the Iraqi forces' growing capabilities, has some military experts wondering whether the Pentagon could accelerate the drawdown of its troops.
"Do we really need 155,000 troops to support the Iraqis?" asked one senior military official at the Pentagon who didn't want to be identified because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
Well, no, we soon won't need 155,000 troops. We should drop to 140,000 by the time August rolls around. But we will be needed:
The role of U.S. soldiers also has begun changing. In parts of Iraq , soldiers said they now feel more like peacekeepers than war fighters. Indeed, as their Iraqi counterparts lead offensives, U.S. soldiers increasingly are supporting them with logistics by patrolling nearby neighborhoods or training new units.
This is the shape of things to come and is part of the plan. Iraqis are manning the front lines first and letting us handle the more technically difficult support operations. In time, even these support functions will be handed off to Iraqis.
But can we pull out dramatically faster? Some in the Pentagon want to. But this comment misses the point completely:
The United States is becoming less relevant in Iraq , they argue, and keeping 15 combat brigades in Iraq indefinitely threatens to break an already fragile Army.
No, no, no. Keeping 15 combat brigades fighting in Iraq indefinitely without increasing the number of total brigades to allow for a 2:1 home-to-fighting time ratio will break the active Army--at some point.
But if we aren't fighting, even with 15 combat brigades (two of which are Marine units right now) in Iraq, how does this break the Army? When we had about 16 Army brigades in Europe during the Cold War, which was also about a third of our total active Army brigades in those days, did we speak of breaking the Army by keeping up that pace of deployment? Obviously, no.
What breaks the Army is constant combat and threat of combat with too little time at home to rest and recuperate. If the Army in Iraq is in no more danger than in Germany, the whole dwell time ratio argument drops away in irrelevancy.
If violence drops off more rapidly than we expect, we can afford to keep the combat brigades in Iraq, safely out of the way in larger bases or protecting safer areas, as an insurance against a resurgence of violence for some time. And that deployment won't be more of a strain on the Army than being in Germany or Kansas.
