If Elected
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and PATRICK HEALY
Published: March 14, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.
In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain in Iraq after taking office would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.
In outlining how she would handle Iraq as commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton articulated a more-nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of “bringing the troops home.”
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Mrs. Clinton’s plans carry some political risk. Although she has been extremely critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the war, some liberal Democrats are deeply suspicious of her intentions on Iraq, given that she voted in 2002 to authorize the use of force there and, unlike some of her rivals for the Democratic nomination, has not apologized for having done so. Senator Clinton’s proposal is also likely to stir up debate among military specialists. Some counterinsurgency experts say the plan is unrealistic because Iraqis are unlikely to provide useful tips about Al Qaeda operatives if American troops curtail their interaction with the Iraqi public and end their efforts to protect Iraqi neighborhoods. But a former Pentagon official argued that such an approach would minimize American casualties and thus make it easier politically to sustain a long-term military presence that might prevent the fighting from spreading throughout the region.
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“It would be fewer troops,” she said. “But what we can do is to almost take a line north of — between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region the ones that are going to remain for our antiterrorism mission; for our northern support mission; for our ability to respond to the Iranians; and to continue to provide support, if called for, for the Iraqis.”
moreFriday, March 16, 2007
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she would keep some US troops in Iraq to fight al-Qaeda, curb Iranian influence, protect the Kurds and assist the Iraqi military.
The elements of this plan will not work or are unnecessary.
1. The Kurds don't need protecting. Their Peshmerga military, 60,000 to 100,000 strong and well trained and armed, is the best indigenous fighting force in Iraq. There is almost no violence in the territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government, precisely because the Peshmerga are so good. There are almost no US troops up north because even now they are not needed.
2. There is no al-Qaeda in Iraq in the technical sense of the word, of fighters who have sworn fealty to Usama Bin Laden. There are a small number, probably less than a thousand, of foreign volunteers fighting in the country, mainly from other Arab states but also from Europe. They are mostly Salafi Jihadis (revivalist militants) and act as adjuncts to local Iraqi guerrilla cells, all of which are much bigger and more important. They are there to fight US occupation and would probably just go home if it ended. If peace was made with the Iraqi Sunnis, the Iraqis themselves would expel or slit the throats of the foreigners. If peace isn't made with them, they'll keep giving the foreign volunteers cars rigged up with bombs to go detonate. Either way, the US military cannot fight "al-Qaeda" in Iraq in isolation from the struggle against the Sunni Arabs. And, a small force such as she is proposing would be massacred in al-Anbar Province if there were still hostilities with the Sunni Arabs in general.
3. There are no Iranian units in Iraq. There are no Iranian prisoners to speak of in US custody in Iraq, even though 12,000 prisoners are being detained. The US did arrest a handful of Iranians deputed to the compound of Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and to Irbil, the power base of Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani. These Iranians were there at Iraqi invitation. The US can only interfere here because it has a big force in the country. A small US military force could do nothing whatsoever about Iranian influence in Shiite Iraq, especially in the face of Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish desire for such cooperation. There will be millions of pilgrims coming back and forth, and they all can't be monitored. The major Shiite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is tightly linked with Tehran even while being among the main US allies. Small US units trying to take on Iranians in the Shiite south would risk being massacred by thousands of angry Iraqi Shiites.
4. Leaving small numbers of US troops in Iraq to assist the Iraqi military over the short term might be desirable and might be practicable, though I've been advised that it might not work. Over the medium to long term it would be most unwise because it would set up a strong risk of the US being pulled back into the civil war. What if you put a US company in with an Iraqi battalion, and the whole unit was ambushed by Sunni Arab guerrillas and many US troops killed? Either you let them get away with it, which is an invitation for them strike again at other US troops. Or you retaliate, which means putting more US units in for a retaliatory operation.
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