Exit Strategies

QandO has an entry relating to exit strategies from Iraq. They quote four experts from the The Council on Foreign Relations whose article I linked on the topic. The article is interesting and QandO's comment is pretty spot on.

The remarkable thing about these strategies—and, indeed, most strategies being tossed about—is the fundamental similarity between them. As much as various sides talk about the weakness of their opponents strategy, almost all strategies incorporate the same basic elements:

• Train Iraqi security forces.


• Give the Iraqis time and space to establish democratic institutions.


• Reassure the US and Iraqi public about US goals, intentions and progress.


• Withdraw US troops at a slow to moderate pace.

Excepting perhaps the Murtha plan, there's really not an awful lot of daylight between many of the strategies being put forth by supporters and critics of the war.

Max Boot was one of the comment0rs of the original article and he has a couple of other articles at the CFR site on Iraq. The first I thought was relevant discusses the factual disconnect between Iraqis and the US military to the Withdrawal crowd.

When it comes to the future of Iraq, there is a deep disconnect between those who have firsthand knowledge of the situation—Iraqis and U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq—and those whose impressions are shaped by doomsday press coverage and the imperatives of domestic politics.

A large majority of the American public is convinced that the liberation of Iraq was a mistake, while a smaller but growing number thinks that we are losing and that we need to pull out soon. Those sentiments are echoed by finger-in-the-wind politicians, including many - —such as John Kerry, Harry Reid, John Edwards, John Murtha and Bill Clinton - who supported the invasion.

Yet in a survey last month from the U.S.-based International Republican Institute, 47% of Iraqis polled said their country was headed in the right direction, as opposed to 37% who said they thought that it was going in the wrong direction. And 56% thought things would be better in six months. Only 16% thought they would be worse.

American soldiers are also much more optimistic than American civilians. The Pew Research Center and the Council on Foreign Relations just released a survey of American elites that found that 64% of military officers are confident that we will succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq. The comparable figures for journalists and academics are 33% and 27%, respectively. Even more impressive than the Pew poll is the evidence of how our service members are voting with their feet. Although both the Army and the Marine Corps are having trouble attracting fresh recruits—no surprise, given the state of public opinion regarding Iraq—reenlistment rates continue to exceed expectations. Veterans are expressing their confidence in the war effort by signing up to continue fighting.

You can read the rest yourself.

There is also his piece on the White Flag Democrats.

Just a few years ago, it seemed as if the Democrats had finally kicked the post-Vietnam, peace-at-any-price syndrome. Before the invasion of Iraq, leading Democrats sounded hawkish in demanding action to deal with what Kerry called the “particularly grievous threat” posed by Saddam Hussein. But it seems that they only wanted to do something if the cost would be minuscule. Now that the war has turned out to be a lot harder than anticipated, the Democrats want to run up the white flag.

They are offering two excuses for their loss of will. First, they claim they were "“misled into war"” by a duplicitous administration. But it wasn'’t George W. Bush who said, "“I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons [of mass destruction] again.”" It was Bill Clinton on Dec. 16, 1998. As this example indicates, the warnings issued by Bush were virtually identical to those of his Democratic predecessor.

Again, you should read the rest yourself.