A modest proposal for getting out of the Iraq mess

Posted on Wed, Jul. 14, 2004
A modest proposal for getting out of the Iraq mess
By Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Well, it's a fine old mess they've gotten us into.

President Bush says he was right to invade Iraq even if none of the reasons for going turned out to be true - and what we need to do is "stay the course." Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld says, "It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this (the war against terrorism)."

Our president says that the country is much safer today because of his decisions. Our secretary of homeland security says that we need to be on the alert for a big al-Qaeda terror attack inside the United States any day now.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken the lives of nearly 1,000 American soldiers and Marines to date. They threaten to break utterly our Army and Marine Corps, not to mention the misused and overworked Reserve and National Guard units.

Retired Navy Capt. John Byron, in the July issue of Proceedings of the Naval Institute, writes:

"The war in Iraq is wrecking the Army and the Marine Corps. Troop rotations are in shambles and the all-volunteer force is starting to crumble as we extend combat tours and struggle to get enough boots on the ground.

"We have broken our social contract with the members of the National Guard and the reserve forces, misusing them as substitutes for active forces in an open-ended operation in Iraq that is well short of national emergency. These backup forces are demoralized and headed for the door."

This administration cannot admit that mistakes have been made. Not even one mistake. If they do the whole house of cards might tumble. But if you won't admit a mistake, how do you go about correcting it? When you find you're in a hole, stop digging.

So here is a modest proposal to begin improving our situation in Iraq: We will withdraw our forces to desert enclaves along the Iraqi borders with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Since the Iraqis don't want us patrolling their streets, we won't. We will hand that duty over to the newly sovereign Iraq government and its police, militia and army.

By building our camps in the vicinity of borders with friendly nations we will greatly shorten our supply lines and remove them from Iraq's roads. There will be no American trucks on the highways to be blown up, burned and looted.

We will guarantee Iraq's security from external threat. It will be up to the Iraqis whether they now build for themselves a new, peaceful country.

Our military camps should have a 20-mile clear field of fire all around and signs in eight languages warning that all who trespass face imminent death. This should allow us to begin reducing the 140,000 soldiers and Marines now tied down securing and policing Iraq and its cities and towns and highways.

A division each -15,000 troops - in three enclaves, north, south and central, should be enough to maintain the presence. Two Army divisions, one Marine, all of them active duty. That will free the National Guard and Reserves, who now make up nearly half the force, to go home and resume their normal lives.

All matters of contracting for rebuilding and rehabilitating basic services in Iraq would then be handled by the Iraqi government, using their oil revenues. No American contract employees would remain in Iraq, except for those working for the American military inside the three American enclaves.

That would mean no Americans available for kidnapping or brutal televised execution.

There would then be two standard answers for almost any question about a problem in Iraq:

- It's not our problem.

-It's not our business.

How's that for a way out of the mess?
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ABOUT THE WRITER

Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045.