Congress is Us: Measuring Iraq Strategies

WomenMatter works to nail down the facts on our Life Issues and analyze the tradeoffs, the costs, and the advantages of major policy alternatives. But when it comes to Iraq, people even disagree about the facts.

What everyone does agree on is that Iraq is in crisis. The details of the crisis are many and easy to spot: the open warfare between Shiites and Sunnis among the Arab population, the armed groups, both militias (private armies) and insurgents (armed rebels) that have not been controlled by the Iraqi government, and the lack of jobs, electricity, and government action about sharing the money from sales of oil.

Now that there is a division of power between Democrats and Republicans in the federal government and an approved strategy for what’s next in Iraq is under debate, we the people have, for the first time in American history, an opportunity to affect foreign policy at the moment it is being made. Armed with detailed information from C-Span and WomenMatter, we can get to our representatives within minutes. We do not have to use mail, phone, or an appointment with their Washington office.

Before we weigh in, we each need to know the specifics that are under discussion in order to make an educated judgment. So, WomenMatter takes a look at the details of different Iraq strategies. Read carefully and decide for yourself - then click on the connection to Congress NOW.

Iraq Study Group

A bipartisan group commissioned by our representatives in Congress through the Institute for Peace began an analysis of the situation in March 2006. This group, called the Iraq Study Group, published its report in December 2006 with 79 recommendations for improving the situation in Iraq. The report insisted that all 79 specifics should be adopted as a whole approach.

The Iraq Study Group insists on an external strategy requiring the U.S. to work with the surrounding Middle Eastern countries towards stability in Iraq, including peace negotiations with Israel and Palestine. Through negotiations, they argue, the U.S. can encourage Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria to support peace and progress for their own well-being.

In addition, the group’s internal strategy would like to see the military reduce its combat role by 2008 and shift its participation in communications, transportation, and organization building. Further, the report recommends that the U.S. work with Iraq’s leaders to set specific goals on security, governance, and economic progress. They call for shifting American troops from combat soldiers to special operations who actually live with Iraqis and their army and police in the combat zones as the Iraqis take responsibility for stopping the sectarian violence.

The report makes it clear that the emphasis is on diplomacy with a redirected and redeployed smaller military force.

For more on this, click here.

For the full report, click here.

  Clinton strategy

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat from New York has focused her strategy on the internal situation, similar to that of the Iraq Study Group. She advocates limiting the number of American troops to the number that were in Iraq on January 1, 2007. In addition she recommends putting the responsibility onf the Maliki government to achieve within six months specific actions to stop the sectarian violence and implement the oil and economic goals. If they are not achieved, the U.S. should redeploy our troops. She also has called a halt to using our tax dollars to pay for Iraqi troops when they do not perform as we require.

Bush Administration strategy

Prior to President George W. Bush's announcement on January 10, 2007 of his change of strategy in Iraq, Frederick W. Kagan from The American Enterprise Institute released an expanded report with General Jack Keane (U.S. Army, ret.) calling for a substantial "surge" of U.S. troops to secure critical areas of Baghdad as part of a first-phase change in strategy. In this report, Kagan also advocates shifting the U.S. military mission to securing the Iraqi population, neighborhood by neighborhood, increasing reconstruction aid, and putting teams of Americans into each project.

President Bush’s solution is a military one. This strategy rejects initiating diplomacy with Iran and Syria which is the prime recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group which emphasized that military solutions have not worked...

President Bush plans to use at least 20,000 more troops in Baghdad and Anbar province where the violence is worst. Some of these soldiers will be transferred from Afghanistan; some are reservists who will have their tour of duty extended.

In this plan, the Iraqi government will control its own security forces, permit troops into heretofore protected Shiite strongholds, and use American troops primarily as backup support. Further, this strategy relies on Prime Minister Maliki’s government’s ability to take charge and assumes that American withdrawal will cause the volatile Middle East to erupt and more U.S. troops to be sent in the future.

Proponents of this plan say victory is possible. By "victory" they mean a stable, democratic Iraq.

Biden’s strategy

Democratic Senator Joseph R. Biden (Delaware) has a different plan. He would like to withdraw troops from Iraq by the end of 2007 and instigate a five-point plan:

1. Establish One Iraq, with Three Regions

• Establish three largely autonomous regions with a strong but limited central government in Baghdad
• Put the central government in charge of border defense, foreign policy, oil production and revenues
• Form regional governments -- Kurd, Sunni and Shiite -- responsible for administering their own regions

2. Share Oil Revenues

• Gain agreement for the federal solution from the Sunni Arabs by giving them 20 percent of all present and future oil revenues - an amount roughly proportional to their size - to make their region economically viable
• Empower the central government to set national oil policy and distribute the revenues, which would attract needed foreign investment and reinforce each community’s interest in keeping Iraq intact

3. Increase Reconstruction Assistance and Create a Jobs Program

• Provide more reconstruction assistance, but clearly condition it on the protection of minority and women’s rights and the establishment of a jobs program to give Iraqi youth an alternative to the militia and criminal gangs
• Insist that other countries make good on old commitments and provide new ones - especially the oil-rich Arab Gulf countries

4. Engage the Neighbors, Maintain Iraq’s Territorial Integrity

• With the U.N., convene a regional security conference where Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran, pledge to respect Iraq’s borders and work cooperatively to implement this plan
• Engage Iraq’s neighbors directly to overcome their suspicions and focus their efforts on stabilizing Iraq, not undermining it
• Create a standing Contact Group, to include the major powers, that would engage Iraq’s neighbors and enforce their commitments

5. Drawdown US Troops

• Direct U.S. military commanders to develop a plan to withdraw and re-deploy almost all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2007
• Maintain in or near Iraq a small residual force - perhaps 20,000 troops - to strike any concentration of terrorists, help keep Iraq’s neighbors honest and train its security forces

Murtha’s strategy

Representative John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would like to redeploy troops to friendly territory such as Kuwait or Japan, thereby creating a reaction force outside of Iraq designed to counteract any major disturbances there.

Overall, Murtha’s strategy would greatly reduce the number of troops. Murtha believes that staying in Iraq is not an option politically, militarily or fiscally.

Luttwak’s strategy

Edward N. Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, focuses on diplomacy and the slow, strategic, withdrawal of troops.

He favors redeploying a small force in desert camps to survey by aircraft and satellites any attempt by Iran or Syria to send arms to the Shiites. His view is that withdrawal can be a potent military strategy.

A well-crafted disengagement, Luttwak says, would cause factions to focus on the consequences of a post-American Iraq. A U.S. withdrawal would cause Shiite clerics to reconsider the imminent threat of the Baath loyalist and Sunni fighters.

To read the full report, click here.

What do you think?

After reviewing each of these responses to the Iraq crisis, which do you support? It is important that we each act NOW while the decisions are being made.

Put in your ZIP code below, find your representatives, and let them know what you think!  

You can also discuss details with other WomenMatter readers on our blog.

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