[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL Which Way Out?

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq27jan27.story
EDITORIAL
Which Way Out?

January 27, 2005

On the deadliest day of the Iraq war, with 31 troops killed in a helicopter
crash and six more in insurgent ambushes, President Bush's response was that
the crash would be "very discouraging to the American people." The president
has a gift for understatement when it comes to the war; discouragement has
long since given way to anger, both at the Iraqi insurgents and the U.S.
administration that got us into this mess.

After nearly two years, the deaths of more than 1,400 troops and the
expenditure of well over $200 billion, Bush still refuses to spell out an
exit strategy. Instead, he speaks of bringing the troops home "as soon as
possible" and hails Sunday's election for an interim national assembly.

The onetime goal of ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction went
by the boards when it turned out there were no such weapons. The new target
is Iraq as a launching pad for democracy in the Middle East. But the more
immediate result has been to create a new rallying point for Islamic
fundamentalists.

U.S. officials say American troops will stay until Iraq can protect itself.
Does that mean years, decades? A top general said Monday that the Army
expects to keep 120,000 troops in the country for at least two years, unless
attacks by insurgents lessen or Iraqi forces become more capable.

But troop deployments have stretched the Army greatly and forced the call-up
of large numbers of reserves and National Guard troops. The commander of the
Army Reserve said last month that "dysfunctional" Pentagon policies have
hurt morale and threaten to turn the 200,000-strong organization into a
"broken force."

American citizens, who are paying the bill for all this and watching their
neighbors or loved ones die in combat, deserve more than comforting
platitudes from the president. They deserve to know how long it is expected
to take to train Iraqi soldiers, police and other security forces. Can
50,000 of the 150,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq come home when 20,000 Iraqi
soldiers and 100,000 police are trained? What will it take to bring the next
50,000 Americans home?

We'll need evidence to support the claims of progress and estimates, not
just someone's word; we remember the administration's claims about weapons
of mass destruction and its lowballing of the war's cost in money and
troops. When the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said before the
war that it would take several hundred thousand troops to pacify the
country, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz called the figure
"wildly inaccurate." When the director of the president's National Economic
Council, Lawrence Lindsey, estimated the war would cost $100 billion to $200
billion, administration officials said the figures were too high. Shinseki
was sidelined, and Lindsey was fired.

Iraq is not Vietnam, but an open-ended commitment of troops and the talk of
using increasing numbers of soldiers as "trainers" for Iraqi forces summon
ghosts of quagmire and years of deceit that ravaged an army and a nation. We
can't afford to walk down that trail again.

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