Well, it’s “really happening,” said Dan Murphy in CSMonitor.com. Two years after President Obama promised a full withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, White House officials leaked plans last week to draw down to just 3,000 troops on Jan. 1, 2012. That’s far fewer than the 14,000 to 18,000 troops requested by U.S. generals, and a precipitous drop from the 48,000 still stationed there now. Many Iraqis are expressing alarm over “the prospect of such a drastic drawdown,” said Michael Schmidt in The New York Times. “Iraq is just not ready,” said the governor of Anbar Province, Mohammed Qasim Abed, who for eight years has called for the Americans to leave. With Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds still struggling for control, and the country’s elected leaders inspiring little confidence, Abed and other Iraqis fear a return to the sectarian violence and chaos that followed Saddam Hussein’s ouster eight years ago.
A few thousand troops “is a shockingly low number,” said Max Boot in Commentary​Magazine.com. What the Iraqis need more than anything is military trainers to strengthen their own security forces. A force of only 3,000, however, “may be just enough troops to provide targets for Iranian-backed militias, but not enough to have a meaningful impact in a country of more than 25 million people.” The Iraqi government indicated that it might accept 10,000 U.S. troops, said James Kitfield in TheAtlantic.com. But for political reasons, Obama would rather take the chance that the effort to transform Iraq will fail “at the finish line,’’ despite the blood and treasure sacrificed to get this far.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
