OPTIONS

Ordinarily, I would think asking for options in the midst of a war is stupid to put it mildly. Think about it. What we learned in Vietnam, when you fight, you fight to win. If you don't, why do it? The suffering, the pain, the heartbreak. However, Iraq is so broken, what we have to do is put all "heads" together to try and figure the mess out. Iraq has become a tangled mess: complicity and incompetence has brought us to this point. There is no area of Iraq that is fixable. My interest lie with the Americans who are caught in this tangled mess, in the "crosshairs if you will.

In Iraq, like all of the Middle East, tangled is by far the best term. Nothing is as it seems. As someone has said, commitments are made, then broken, while the ground shifts in an instance, just like the desert sands. Nothing is more reminiscent of it than a story about a young military police Captain who commands an MP company in one of the districts of Baghdad. Her grandfather was in WW II, her Dad in Vietnam and here she is in Iraq. She came to the assignment full of enthusiasm, ready to use her training to teach the local police how to investigate crime, how to make sure they have a case and to do general policing work. What has happened is that the Police are under siege, not from petty crime but from armed militia, bombings, mortar fire. What the Iraqi police need to be trained in is how to be infantrymen, to fight, to protect. The local policemen have no supplies, no body armor, relatively nothing. Our young Captain is not equipped to do her job.

So, what does she do. She does what Vietnam vets learned in Vietnam. Quickly, in the Nam, we sized up the war and realized that we were in a "no win" zone. At first we fought, took the high ground and then the next day we left it and the enemy moved back in. How utterly stupid. So, what did we do? We did like the young Captain in Iraq is doing--you protect your men, you dedicate yourself to getting out of the situation alive. Forget issues of training, helping, leaving something behind better than when you found it. No way, get the hell out. It is where we are now in Iraq. Let's get the hell out.

How to do it is the issue: (1) immediately, (2) phased withdrawal, (3) send in more troops.
All of these positions require all kinds of caveats but let's select the lessor of all evils. Phased drawdown. Don't you love that word? Drawdown means slow reduction. Let's get the conventional troops out of Iraq immediately and leave 30-50,000 Special Operations soldiers , to include CIA trained (think Alfghnistan). Give them all the firepower that they now have to protect themselves. Make them advisers to the police and the military, reduce our physical presence, and prepare for a complete withdrawal.

What we do not have in Iraq is a possibility for a long term commitment. Based on a fanatical approach to Islam, foreign troops have to be gone. We are looking at somewhat of an Iranian Iraq, simply it is what is going to happen with the Shiite majority anyway--moving toward a theocracy. Will the violence be quelled? Who knows? Eventually, it will, I think. At this point, we have to admit, as my bud, Henry Kissinger said, we have failed. Is this so bad? Simply, we made a bad choice, to put the best spin on it, we can say, it was a grand experiment that went to hell. Next case.