McCain: Retreat and re-invasion a dangerous and costly strategy

posted at 8:32 am on April 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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John McCain will directly target Barack Obama in a speech this morning at the VFW at its national headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. McCain will highlight Obama’s suggestion that we can pull our troops out of Iraq, but then reinsert them if terrorists show up and start causing trouble. Even apart from the stupidity of not recognizing that al-Qaeda is already in Iraq now and causing trouble, McCain outlines exactly what that policy would mean — a costly and dangerous re-invasion that would kill a lot more civilians and Americans:

Today these goals are within reach. “Never despair,” Winston Churchill once said. And we did not despair. We were tested, and we rose to the challenge. Some political leaders close their eyes to the progress that the surge has made possible, and want only to argue about the past. We can have that debate. I profoundly disagree with those who say we would all be better off if we had left Saddam Hussein in power. Americans should be proud that they led the way in removing a vicious dictator and opening the door to freedom, stability, and prosperity in Iraq and across the Middle East.

But the question for the next President is not about the past, but about the future and how to secure it. Our most vital security interests are at stake in Iraq. The stability of the entire Middle East, that volatile and critically important region, is at stake. The United States’ credibility as a moral and political leader is at stake. How to safeguard those interests is what we should be debating.

There are those who today argue for a hasty withdrawal from Iraq. Some would withdraw regardless of the consequences. Others say that we can withdraw now and then return if trouble starts again. What they are really proposing, if they mean what they say, is a policy of withdraw and re-invade. For if we withdraw hastily and irresponsibly, we will guarantee the trouble will come immediately. Our allies, Arab countries, the UN, and the Iraqis themselves will not step up to their responsibilities if we recklessly retreat. I can hardly imagine a more imprudent and dangerous course.

Over the past year, the counterinsurgency strategy of General Petraeus has been based on the premise that establishing greater security in Iraq is indispensable to advancing political reconciliation and economic reconstruction; to making diplomatic progress in the region; and to preparing the Iraqi military to assume its responsibilities to defend the sovereignty of Iraq and the authority of its elected government. Should the United States withdraw from Iraq before that level of security is established those goals will be infinitely harder if not impossible to attain. Al Qaeda in Iraq will proclaim victory and increase its efforts to provoke sectarian tensions in Iraq into a full scale civil war that could descend into genocide and destabilize the Middle East. Iraq would be a failed state that could become a haven for terrorists to train and plan their operations. Irans influence in Iraq – especially southern Iraq – and throughout the region would increase substantially and encourage other countries to seek accommodation with Tehran at the expense of our interests. These likely consequences of America’s failure in Iraq would, almost certainly, require us to return to Iraq or draw us into a wider and far costlier war.

Basically, Obama makes the same argument as the John Murtha “redeploy over an event horizon” strategy did in 2005. It envisions a months-long withdrawal from Iraq and the stationing of the entire force somewhere where it can be redeployed back into Iraq if needed. That strategy misses a couple of key points, the first being where exactly the forces will go. Who will take 150,000 American troops retreating in the face of terrorist action? What country will volunteer to have the terrorists enter their nation, as they certainly would to keep America on the retreat from the region?

Murtha suggested Okinawa, about 7,000 miles from Iraq — which leads us to the second stupidity of this strategy. Once we pull out of Iraq, we would have to stage a re-invasion to enter it again when terrorists renew their efforts to destroy the elected Iraqi government. If we’re doing it from Qatar and Kuwait, it will be costly enough to move 150,000 American troops across a country the size of Iraq. If we’re doing it from Okinawa or the US, it will dwarf the current cost structure of the Iraqi engagement. It will result in hundreds of dead soldies and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties, and that’s before we start re-enacting the Second Battle of Fallujah all across Iraq.

And all of that assumes that we will have the political will to re-invade Iraq to fight terrorists. Barack Obama doesn’t want to fight the terrorists already in Iraq now. Why should we trust that he will want to fight them at some later date? Why would the governments in the region have any confidence in our determination to do so if we retreat now? If we leave Iraq, the Iraqis know we won’t come back under an Obama administration — and Iraq will have to start cutting deals with militias and al-Qaeda , allowing radicalism to flourish and to have a steady oil income.

Expect McCain to hit this hard over the coming months. An American withdrawal now makes it almost impossible to rescue Iraq or anyone else in the region later. A leader with experience and vision understands this — and Obama has neither.

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