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There’s a lot of tendentious material in this Washington Post piece about the alleged post-combat phase of the Iraq war. But Paul Rieckhoff asks a central question:
“If the war is ‘over,’ what happens if a Black Hawk goes down next week, God forbid?” asked Paul Rieckhoff, a veterans advocate. While combat troops have departed, the tens of thousands of troops still in Iraq are expected to engage in defensive military action when necessary, and Special Forces troops will continue to conduct counterterrorism missions.
But the war isn’t over. It’s not over until it’s over. The fact that 50,000 troops remain in Iraq, and will in staggered form until December 2011, testifies to the fact that it isn’t over. Those troops are an insurance policy — a hedge that Iraq doesn’t go completely off the rails before then.
The real trouble is that if it does, we’re not going to re-escalate. And what’s more, if Iraq really does re-descend into chaos, we wouldn’t have either the will or the capability to re-align it. We’re starting to hear murmurs from the center to the right contending that– well, they don’t really instantiate what they mean, but at the least, they express discomfort with leaving Iraq. And that’s a fair point for debate. But those who make that argument have an obligation to explain whether we should pull out of Afghanistan — not just troops, but the ISR and other supporting assets that make warfighting possible — and back into Iraq. And for what mission, if post-counterinsurgency security transitioning doesn’t work? As Marc Ambinder reports, the president’s speech tonight is going to cast the end of the Iraq war as a necessary step to refocusing on the broader struggle against al-Qaeda. (More on that in my next post.)
But Paul is right. Those who die in Iraq from now to December 2011 will have given the ultimate sacrifice in a war — a war that is no less real after tonight, when Operation New Dawn (ugh) begins, than it was after May 1, 2003. If we choose not to pay attention, that’s a discredit to us, not to them, just as it was when troops died in Afghanistan during the six years of the “Forgotten War” era. The Obama administration gambles that stair-stepping down the war is the safest way to extricate the country from it. But the administration will still have the responsibility of prosecuting that war for the next year.
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Apparently Obama will also be giving Bush a call to thank him for his commitment to the Iraq war — as noted at the end of the Ambinder article.
yep
Check this out.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/coup-detat-standard-poors_b_699476.html
but the sheeple do not really care, do they? Less than 1% of americans are involved in te Iraq war. The msm does not even report stories from the war unless they involve high death counts. So it becomes just a foregotten war, because, after all, 99% of the american people are not involved in any way. Is this the start of the downfall of democracy?
If the rethugs win in Nov I will place some of the blame on the many here have commented that they are not going to vote at all because they want to “punish” Obama. Everything that happens after jan 2011 is in fact your fault because of your desire to punish Obama because he did not do enough to push the country left. Well, guess what, the US is, for the most part,simply ignoring both parties. In fact most people do not care about what either side wants, they just want to be left alone. Most of the people that I have been talking to never watch the news, don’t read the papers and frmly believe that nothing govt does affects them. Just where did these people go to school?
My kids-all in their 30s-never watch the news but get all their information from the internet. I really feel sorry for the younger generations, they haven’t got a clue about what is going to happen over the next few years.
Apathy rules.
Which gives rise to Authoritarianism
Besides the troops, how many mercenaries (private contractors functioning as troops) are in-country?
” a war that is no less real after tonight, when Operation New Dawn (ugh) begins, than it was after May 1, 2003″
Come on, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The war was still hot in 2003 and there was no Iraqi security force. If you fail to distinguish between peace-keeping operations or Foreign Internal Defense or stability operations (whatever they call it these days) and full-throated combat operations led by and executed by US troops, then you’re in trouble as a war correspondent. We’re not at war in Germany or Japan, and yet we have “combat” troops there, too.
Viva la difference. We’re not disengaging from Iraq (unfortunately) but we are putting the burden of security operations on Iraq. That’s the way it should be.
If they are non combat troops than they don’t need their weapons right ?
A pistol is more than enough to defend themselves.
Maybe it’s not such a good idea to have non combat troops remain in a combat area ?
al Qaeda is the pixie dust of failed American policy. Sprinkle it on and even the most destructive, boneheaded piece of bungling can be justified.
Hysterically funny. Yes, it is hard to keep up with the current propaganda and talking points, isn’t it? Should we call them half-throated combat operations? Three-eighths?
You are wrong to blame the American people (like me, for example) for being misled and lied to by supposedly responsible government and media operatives. It’s not our, or their, fault.
One of the key concerns for soldiers there is probably going to be their veterans benefits or lack of same. If the war’s over, and they’re over there, are they veterans, are they “Iraq-era” veterans (like guys who enlisted between ’73 and ’75 are Vietnam-era veterans) or are they just peace-time soldiers without vets bennies?
I mean, if you’re killed and it’s not a war, you’re dead either way. If you’re hacked up or fucked up or loused up or just not that cool because you were there after the big troop draw-down, is the US government still giving you Vets bennies or are you kind of short-changed?
Anyone know?
Having a great belief in justice, I’m hoping that Iraqi patriots continue to do away with American mercenary thugs who murder their relatives (giggling all the while), rape their girls, and sodomize their detainees.
They are calling them non-combat, but from what I’ve read and heard on TV, they REALLY are combat troops. This is nothing more than a new US military base that will be there in perpetuity. Like all the other places in the world, like Korea, Japan, Germany,etc., where we have bases, we will NEVER leave (until we are forced out).