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Jewish World Review Jan. 17, 2007 / 27 Teves, 5767 U.S. must be stronger, not weaker, in Iraq By E. Thomas McClanahan
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | To many Americans, the war in Iraq is already over. We lost. The Iraqi center could not hold. It's time to get out. I don't want to demean this point of view, although I find it personally hard to comprehend. The notion that the United States - with its reserves of wealth and its military power - cannot materially improve security in the city of Baghdad strikes me as absurd. Still, after so much bloodshed and frustration, it's understandable that many would look for the exit. Yes, it's been nearly four years. Yes, it's been a ghastly mess. But no insurgency - no war against an enemy with the capacity to melt into an indigenous population - can be won quickly. We have had to grope for the right approach and the right leadership, and even now there's no assurance we have found them. Bush will order the deployment of 21,500 more troops to Iraq. Baghdad will be divided into nine districts, with a U.S. battalion quartered in each. Each U.S. battalion will provide backup for an Iraqi Army brigade - up to 5,000 troops - assigned to the district, along with Iraqi police units. An additional U.S. brigade will be deployed to the Sunni insurgent haven of Anbar province. The Iraqis have pledged to remove political protection for sectarian militias and provide their own troop surge for Baghdad. And Bush says U.S. forces will do more to stop the infiltration of agents and jihadists from Iran and Syria. The early signs last week were encouraging. The Iraqi government reportedly put Shiite militias on notice, including those attached to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. As one Iraqi lawmaker put it in an interview with The Associated Press, "The government has told the Sadrists: `If we want to build a state we have no other choice but to attack armed groups.'" Iraq will be a violent place for a long time, but this change in tactics has the potential to begin reversing the trend in Baghdad mayhem. Currently, the daily death toll in Baghdad is anywhere from two dozen to scores of victims. A premature U.S. withdrawal could lead to a drastic increase in the violence, sending those numbers soaring into the thousands, while creating a power vacuum that draws in Saudi, Jordanian, Iranian and Turkish forces. Many of those opposed to Bush's plan speak as if it's possible to withdraw without suffering greater harm to our interests and security. But we cannot "redeploy" without paying a heavy price. Richard Fernandez (who blogs at http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com) sees the Iraq conflict as part of a larger Islamic civil war between Sunni and Shia. This war has been raging at least since the Iranian Revolution and the founding of al-Qaeda, which sprang into existence partly in response. It is not possible for the United States to avoid involvement in this struggle. While Americans see the Iraq war mainly through the prism of partisan politics, the stakes go beyond the issue of Bush's place in history. When this president's term is completed, the problems he faced will remain, and history will also judge those who come after. As Fernandez wrote, "it will not be enough to say `We gave up trying because George W. Bush messed it up so badly.' Reality accepts no such excuses. If America lacked the doctrine and the means to bring order and civility to the Middle East, then it should set about acquiring them. Because the challenges will not go away. It must get what it needs. The translators, the cultural knowledge; the weapons systems, the training; the information strategems; the confidence." Yes, the confidence. Those who argue that we can wash our hands of this conflict are simply fooling themselves, and potentially sowing the seeds of more fearsome trials in the future. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
E. Thomas McClanahan is a member of the Kansas City Star editorial board. Comment by clicking here.
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