Three More Years In Iraq?

Charles V. Peña

March 23, 2006

Charles V. Peña is an adviser on the Straus Military Reform Project, senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, analyst for MSNBC television, and author of the forthcoming book Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism (Potomac Books, April 2006) and co-author of Exiting Iraq: Why the United States Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda (Cato Institute, 2004).

Just prior to launching the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, President George W. Bush said that U.S. forces would “remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more.”  When pressed about how long “as long as necessary” might be, the president has consistently refused to set a date for when—“not a day more"—instead only saying that U.S. forces can be drawn down as Iraqi security forces are built up.  Apparently, however, Bush has already decided that U.S. troops will not be leaving anytime soon—on Tuesday he stated that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would “be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.”  The prospect of U.S. troops remaining in Iraq for another three years or longer raises several important questions.

With Iraq teetering on the brink of civil war (according to President Bush, “Our job is to make sure civil war doesn't happen”), the first question is whether the U.S. troop presence (currently about 130,000 soldiers) is sufficient to stem the tide of violence spurred by the insurgency. History suggests not. The British—often acknowledged as the most experienced practitioners of counterinsurgency operations and demonstrably more successful than the U.S. military—needed a force ratio of 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants deployed for more than a decade in Malaysia and more than 25 years in Northern Ireland.  With a population of nearly 25 million people, to meet the same standard in Iraq would require a force of 500,000 troops—almost four times the current Iraq deployment and equal to the size of the entire active duty U.S. Army (already strained by the occupation)—for perhaps a decade or longer.

There is also the question of troop requirements to secure Iraq’s borders—900 miles with Iran, 375 miles with Syria, 110 miles with Jordan and 500 miles with Saudi Arabia. This is roughly the equivalent of the U.S.-Mexican border, over which more than 100,000 illegal immigrants cross every year—despite the efforts of more than 10,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents.

The paradox is that, from a purely military perspective, more troops may be needed to fight the insurgency and maintain security in Iraq—the president says that decisions about force levels will be made by commanders on the ground—but increasing the force size would likely make the problem worse. Polls have consistently shown that the majority of Iraqi people do not want to be occupied by a foreign military, so more troops would simply confirm that the U.S. is an occupying power—increasing anti-American resentment and pouring more fuel on the insurgency.  And if civil war did break out (although, according to former Iraqi interim prime minister Iyad Allawi , “if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is”), one likely result is that U.S. forces would get caught in the crossfire—which is exactly what happened in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Even if force levels are not increased, a large U.S. military presence in Iraq will be a clarion call for insurgents and jihadists to expel a foreign occupier. But beyond the question of force size in Iraq, the larger—and more fundamental—question is whether keeping U.S. forces in Iraq for another three years or longer makes us safer.

However well-intentioned the United States' desire to bestow democracy on Iraq might be, the undeniable fact is that the U.S. military is occupying a Muslim country, which is a powerful tool for Islamic radicals to incite anti-American sentiment—the stepping stone to hatred and then to violence and terrorism, not just in Iraq but all over the world. If the unnecessary presence of 5,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War was a primary motive for Osama bin Laden’s hatred of the United States and one of his consistently stated reasons for engaging in terrorism, including the Sept. 11 attacks, one can only wonder how the continued presence of more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq is increasing radicalism throughout the Islamic world and encouraging Muslims (regardless of their sympathies towards al Qaeda) to unite against the United States.

Although President Bush claims that by staying in Iraq “we are taking the fight to the enemy abroad so we do not have to face them here at home,” the harsh reality is that the U.S. military presence may be doing more to breed and train terrorists elsewhere than it is to terminate them there. According to a CIA assessment , Iraq may be a more potent training and breeding ground for Islamic terrorists than Afghanistan was in the 1980s because it is a real-world laboratory for militants to hone their tradecraft in an urban combat environment.

Finally, continuing to focus on Iraq as the central front in the war on terrorism—which is more self-fulfilling prophecy than it is a statement of fact—means not paying enough attention to the real threat to America. Indeed, how is it that the bounty placed on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's head ($25 million) is now the same as Osama bin Laden? It seems almost silly, but we need to remind ourselves who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001: al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. And bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, not Iraq.

President Bush seems willing to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the remainder of his term because he is “optimistic we'll succeed. If not, I'd pull our troops out.” But this seems more like a stubborn desire to ignore reality and an inability to comprehend that making a stand in Iraq might be akin to Custer at Little Big Horn. Not only will Americans be less safe against the threat of terrorism, but another tragedy will be that—just as happened in Vietnam—the U.S. military will likely be blamed for a war gone bad, even though the fault lies with U.S. policymakers.