Time to withdraw from Iraq

As the nation took a moment to remember those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, it also stood poised at the crossroads of deciding what to do about the war in Iraq that followed those attacks.

More than four years after President Bush led this nation to war against Saddam Hussein and his, as it turned out non-existent, weapons of mass destruction, the United States is hopelessly mired in an urban guerilla war against terrorists and caught in the crossfire of a civil war between Sunni and Shia factions. Suffering death by a thousand cuts, the U.S. military and American prestige worldwide is suffering terribly, as the casualty totals continue to mount in ones and twos and half-dozen driblets every week -- never enough to be a disaster, but a continuing source of heartache and grief to the families of those brave men and women sacrificed on the alter of Bush's often-flawed and ever-changing policies.

In recent weeks, and this week in particular, a series of reports are being issued concerning our status in Iraq. Are we winning? It doesn't look like it.

The administration's "spin" on the war at this point is already under heavy fire for its methodology. Apparently, the angle of a bullet wound to a dead Iraqi civilian determines if it is counted as sectarian violence or simply crime. Somehow, that doesn't seem to make much of a difference to us (and certainly not to the dead Iraqi civilian). Whether killed by unrestrained criminal activity, or sectarian violence, or terrorist attack, the point is our forces and the Iraqi government's forces, army and police, have been unable to prevent thousands of civilians every month from being killed. It's tough to say things are going well when you have to wear a flak jacket and be surrounded by a company of Marines just to venture out onto the streets of Baghdad to report on what's happening in the country.

Unless we decide to redefine "winning," no one can say the war is going well.

There are some signs of long-term hope. The surge that put an extra 30,000 U.S. troops in the country has had a small effect on reducing violence. But then, the military had contended from the beginning, and was ignored by Bush, that 400,000 troops would be needed to prevent an insurgency and control the country. Even with the surge, the U.S. has less than half that in country now. Our armed forces were never given the resources they needed, and at this point it's almost certainly too late.

Gen. Petraeus believes that if the surge is continued until next summer (twice the time period originally anticipated), we can begin turning security over to the Iraqi army, which four years after we began rebuilding it still can't operate on its own. And a recent study has called for the entire Iraqi police force to be disbanded and the U.S. to start all over again with that force.

The Iraqi government has failed to meet most of the benchmarks we had set for it. It has been unable to reach any kind of consensus on policy and power sharing. But then, that should come as no surprise, we can't do that in the United States, either, and we only have two parties, not dozens of competing parties composed of Arabs who hold grudges for centuries.

In recent weeks, Bush has contended we cannot withdraw from Iraq because the terrorists will follow us home if we withdraw. We can't keep nannies and gardeners from slipping into our country unchecked, what makes anyone think we can keep a trained terrorist out? That argument is ridiculous.

No general is going to claim that he's losing a war, but if you listen to Petraeus, and the generals who preceded him, none of them believe we can "win" this war without literally years and years (up to 10 more years by some generals' estimates) of a large continued presence in the country. Americans simply won't put up with 10 more years of war. The cost in blood and treasure is too high, and the payoff too low (an independent Iraq that probably will hate us anyway), for America to be willing to continue supporting Bush's hubris.

If this is the week we determine our long-term strategy, then it should be to reject a continued large-scale presence in Iraq for the next 4-10 years. Our forces should be withdrawn, as soon as possible (which at a minimum would require at least six months), leaving only a small number of Green Beret and Army advisors and a few anti-terrorist special ops teams. Frankly, if we stay, the magnificent military we have will be destroyed and useless for years to respond to any future dangers we might face.

In the end, WE cannot solve the problems that Saddam had kept bottled up by a reign of terror and we unleashed in a misguided belief that freedom and democracy magically solve all problems.

We cannot change the culture of the Arab world. We shouldn't be trying. They have to solve their own problems, and not at the expense of the lives of our brave and dedicated men and women in uniform who have performed magnificently under impossible conditions.

It is time to accept that Bush's policy for a new world order in the Mideast has failed, and bring our troops home as quickly as possible before too many more gold stars are posted in the windows of American families.

-- Kelly Everitt