Over at The Prospect today, various experts discuss the nuts and bolts of withdrawal from Iraq. It's depressing how bad they all seem to believe their favored options are, much less those of the interlocutors they disagree with. Particularly worth noting is Leverett's forthright assault on the that we need to leave a residual ground force within Iraq for counterterrorism operations:
In this regard, it is particularly disappointing that Nossel/Kupchan ignore the critical point that conventional ground forces are essentially useless for counterterrorism missions. Keeping ground forces in Iraq gives the U.S. military no meaningful increase in its operational options against terrorists or other threats to regional stability. It will only perpetuate the enormous human costs, be a boon to jihadist recruitment, and further erode American standing in the world's most critical region.
Unfortunately, the same flawed assumptions that led too many Democratic foreign policy hands to support the invasion of Iraq are displacing real analysis once again, leading too many of the same people to argue that the United States cannot withdraw. Increasingly, Democrats' embrace of phased redeployment primarily reflects a domestic political calculation, whereby Democrats running for national office can appear to address the concerns of their party's antiwar base without alienating neoconservative fellow travelers in its "national security wing" or exposing themselves to Republican charges of "cutting and running" and being "weak" on national security. This may look like smart politics, but it is bad policy.
Oh, snap! Leverett does believe, to be sure, in the retention of force projection capabilities, but not through bases in Iraq or Kuwait. Rather, he'd move to an "over-the-horizon" posture and put the troops on offshore carrier battle groups.
