Gunfighter's Exit Strategy (I)

A commenter on my recent post about GW Bush's "new" strategy for "victory" in Iraq asked me what my strategy for the extraction of our troops in Iraq would be.

I hope the following gives you a bit of insight into what I think on the issue.

I will resist the strong temptation to talk about the fact that we had no business in invading that country to begin with. Our soldiers are already there, so the focus will remain on how to get them out.

The first thing I would do would be to remove the Marines that are responsible for operations in Anbar province. This particular place is the deadliest area, outside of Baghdad, since the beginning of the war. I would bring those Marines to Baghdad, while plans for redeployment were made (it isn't easy returning hundreds of thousands of troops from a combat zone, believe me).

While these Marines are in Baghdad, they will provide a large and aggressive force to assist the Army and Iraqi security forces. This will bring additional troops to Baghdad without further stretching our already thin forces, thus giving the already doomed Maliki government some more breathing room.

Next, I would bring the U.S. Army troops that are in the Mosul area to Basra, and it's environs, to relieve our British friends, so that they could redeploy immediately. Those same American soldiers would continue to protect the Main Supply Route (MSR) that leads back to Kuwait. I would also bring the Polish division into Baghdad for the reasons listed above.

All American forces would collapse back towards Baghdad, leaving Iraqi forces in their places.

Once our forces were more centrally located near the Capitol, I would start getting the troops out via air and by convoy. Naturally, our presence would get smaller and smaller, most of the last troops leaving by air, leaving behind no small amount of weapons (and advisers) and support equipment for the Iraqi Army.

As for what would happen after we leave Iraq, there are no guarantees about how successful their current government will be. The skeptic in me believes that s soon as our troops leave, the real bloodletting Will begin between Sunni and Shia'... what we are seeing now is nothing to what is coming, I am afraid. What will also happen is that the Sunni units and the Shia units of the Iraqi army will spilt like amoebas to join whomever arises as their particular group's main warlord. The Maliki government will fall, and the likely new leader will be Moqtada Al-Sadr, who will immediately proclaim the Islamic Republic of Iraq.

There it is, friends. Iraq will be an Islamic Republic. Not because of a military failure, but because the only thing that was keeping Iraq secular in the first place, was Saddam Hussein, the bloody dictator that we (the U.S.) took out of the equation.

How's that for bitter irony?