Exit Strategy Discussions

The link is a QandO commentary on Ed Koch's take on the arguments.

Naturally Koch has his own plan for Iraq, and naturally it focuses on withdrawal instead of success:

I believe that Democrats and Republicans who are unhappy with the current state of affairs should rally around my proposal on how to leave Iraq. I propose we put our NATO and regional allies on notice that unless they come to Iraq and place boots on the ground and bear their share of the casualties and costs of the war, the U.S. and its allies in Iraq will leave within six months.

Sorry, I can't agree with this one either. Again the arbitrary and artificial timeline. First of all NATO isn't going to do this. So we put ourselves in a corner with little hope of success (in terms of getting NATO to commit troops) and we hold as hostage success in Iraq. If they're not ready in 6 months, then what? Do we pull out anyway to show NATO we're "serious"?

I'll have to agree, Koch's plan is poor. I personally don't see how you can have a strategy which merely is abandoning Iraq unless those fellow NATO countries choose to take over. Sounds like a plan for assured failure to me.

But then Koch says something with which I can completely agree:

In the meanwhile, until we reach a consensus, letÂ’s stop destroying the country we all love. The Democrats and their leaders, Senator Harry Reid and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, should stop calling the President a liar. The Republican Party, with the President, joined by Speaker Hastert and Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt, should apologize to Jack Murtha for their outrageous attack upon him. The recent praise of Murtha by the President and Vice President Cheney is not adequate.

This is the time to understand that we are at war, and young people we sent into harmÂ’s way in defense of our country are dying on the battlefields.

A common sense plea which has been largely ignored. There is a time and place for recriminations, attacks and partisan politics, but it isn't while we're at war. And it is here Koch makes a good argument. Everyone should take a breath, step back, acknowledge that we're at war and we shouldn't be sending mixed signals to our troops or their enemies.

Can't really argue on that. But expecting the politicians in the fever pitched fights we've been seeing as of late, to step back and calm down is probably just too much to expect.

There is also this on the Historical Folly of "Exit Strategy" for Iraq. It starts with Jane Harman's call for a strategy, though I still haven't found anything indicating that she is suggesting any strategy.

The title is "“Needed: An Exit Strategy from Iraq."” It is written by Rep. Jane Harman (D. Calif) and its lede includes these paragraphs.

There is now a strong bipartisan consensus that we need an exit strategy. But yet to emerge is the content of that strategy.

We have two overriding objectives in Iraq: to facilitate a viable power-sharing agreement among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and to turn over responsibility for security to the Iraqis on a steady basis.

Any exit strategy must address both issues in order to leave post-Saddam Iraq in better shape than we found it, to honor the sacrifices of more than 2,000 troops and to justify the expenditure of billions of dollars.

There has never been an "“exit strategy"” for any major war in American history. Until the Battle of Trenton, there were serious questions whether the Americans could even continue the Revolutionary War beyond 1776. Until the French fleet trapped General Cornwallis at Yorktown, there was no end in sight, no "“exit strategy"” for that war.

They are pretty much correct from my understanding of American Military history. I don't think you could even show that the Powell doctrine has ever truly been used as described. Note that the last point of the doctrine requires an exit strategy.

The point of the article is:

The only type of "“exit strategy"” that can exist in any war is a strategy for defeat. We had an "exit strategy"” in Vietnam, and hundreds of thousands of people were murdered as a direct result of that strategy. Because of the vagaries of war, there is not, there cannot be, any preset "“exit strategy"” that will lead to victory. There is only one strategy: Win, and then come home as soon as possible.

We've heard a lot of spouting that we can't win on the ground. I think that is essentially incorrect in that it doesn't separate the original defeat of Saddam's army and the conflict with the insurgency. They are not parts of the same conflict. And, if we can get Iraq mostly stable and under a control of their own government, then I think we will have reached a victory in the battle for the peace.

The real issue, in my opinion, is to stabilize the Iraqi goverment sufficiently as to allow them to take on the terrorists and insurgents, and then leave. The true insurgents will then have a choice of continuing fighting their own country, or becoming a part of a peaceful solution. The Terrorists don't intend to ever stop, so there isn't really any reason to think they will stop bombing mosques or innocents. They want civil war or the equivalent, and that shouldn't be what stops us from leaving when things are close to stable.