When To Leave Iraq -- Today, Tomorrow, or Yesterday?

From Foreign Affairs
WILLIAM E. ODOM, a retired three-star General in the U.S. Army and former Director of the National Security Agency, is a Professor at Yale University and a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. COLIN H. KAHL is an Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

WALK BEFORE RUNNING

Colin H. Kahl

In "The Price of the Surge" (May/June 2008), Steven Simon correctly observes that the Sunni turn against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), known as the Sunni Awakening, has been a key factor in security progress during the period of "the surge." Simon is also on point when he notes that the Awakening, which began before the surge, was not a direct consequence of additional U.S. troops. But although Simon gets much of the past right, he ultimately draws the wrong lessons for U.S. policy moving forward.

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RUSH TO EXIT

William E. Odom

Simon provides a brilliant analysis of Iraq's political realities, past and present, exposing the effects of the U.S. occupation. Sadly, neither the administration nor all but a few outside analysts foresaw them. More recently, most media reporting has wholly ignored the political dynamics of the new "surge" tactic. And peripatetic experts in Washington regularly return from their brief visits to Iraq to assure the public that it is lowering violence but fail to explain why. They presume that progress toward political consolidation has also been occurring, or soon will be. Instead, as Simon explains, political regression has resulted, a "retribalization" of the same nature as that which both the British colonial rulers and the Baathist Party tried to overcome in order to create a modern state in Iraq.

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My Comment: After reading this article I felt a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on my head. This is a cold hard analysis of Iraq today. I wish this analysis and article was written before the invasion of Iraq.