Original post date: Jan 7, 2007
This was my descriptive essay in my Writing Class. If you have read any of my other blogs, you will probably notice some pieces of them in here.
The Iraqi Study Group has recently come out with a report recommending the withdrawal of combat troops in Iraq and increased diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors Iran and Syria. They share the view of the Americans that are getting tired of this war. They feel that the current escalation of sectarian violence between Iraqi ethnic groups is more of a problem for the Iraqi Government than for the United States. They believe that we need to focus our mission there on training the Iraqi military and police to secure their own country. They also want a timetable to withdraw all US forces in Iraq. Some even want a complete withdrawal of US troops by the end of 2007. Even though I agree that we need to provide the Iraqi Security Forces with the proper training to stop the violence, I also agree that we need to provide more troops in the country to quell the violence, not withdraw troops.
The US currently does not have enough troops in Iraq to quell the violence and train Iraqi Security Forces. We need to increase troop strength, however it will be a hard case to push to the American people. With the media biased against any good news, people have no idea that out of the 18 provinces in Iraq, 75% of casualties come from 4 of them: Al Anbar, Baghdad, Salah ad Din and Ninawa. These provinces are in the Sunni Triangle and the stronghold of US resistance by both former Baath Party, Al Qaeda loyalists and Iranian backed Shiite militias. We need to deploy more troops in each of the above four provinces quell the insurgency and focus on training the Iraqi military in those areas. We do need to allow the Iraqi Security Forces to be the on the front lines to quell the sectarian violence. The US military mission should be to secure the borders of Iraq to stop Al Qaeda and Iranian influence from escalating the violence.
Al Qaeda main goal in Iraq is to continue the civil war by promoting the Sunni minority to attack Shiite majority. According to a Newsweek article titled " Bin Laden's Iraq Plans," the terrorist leader has been diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq since 2003. Al Qaeda is trying to drive us out and put us on the defensive. They know from our recent past conflicts and deployment of troops ( Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, and not invading Iraqi during the first Gulf War) that American's Achilles heel is its how its population reacts to casualties. Once they hit the magical number of US casualties, Americans will pull out of the war.
The Iraqi Study Group supports diplomatic negotiations with Iran. This will only result in a dead end. Iran is backing Shiite militias to gain influence in Iraq. An in-depth TIME investigation based on documents smuggled out of Iran, meetings with U.S., British and Iraqi officials, as well as an Iranian agent, armed dissidents and Iraqi militia and political allies reveals that Iran had plans to influence Iraq before the U.S. invaded. Iran is militarily and economically supporting Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani and his network of insurgents as they commit violence against U.S. and coalition forces. Iran is also funding Hizballah and facilitating the import of sophisticated weapons that are killing and wounding U.S. and British troops
We can debate if Iraq was the good strategy in the overall war. In retrospect, I feel we should have waited to invaded Iraq and put more pressure on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Also, I believe we should have put more pressure on Pakistan about quelling support for Al Qaeda in its country's tribal areas. However, there is no denying that Iraq is the central front on this War on Terror. Groups like Al Qaeda and countries like Iran are treating this like a Third World War. In the 1990's we tried to appease the terror groups in that region. We thought that if we tried to negotiate with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and other countries that preach hatred towards the US that we could avoid a war. September 11, 2001 and the rhetoric that some leaders in that Middle East spew about the US should wake us up to the fact that appeasement will never be an option.
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