Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 30 2005 (IPS) — In an apparent bid to unify fractious Democrats behind a consensus plan on Iraq, a think tank with strong links to the administration of former President Bill Clinton has called for a two-year “strategic redeployment” of U.S. forces there that would ensure their almost total withdrawal by January 2008.

The plan, released by the Centre for American Progress (CAP), also calls for Washington to begin withdrawing troops in January 2006, and completely withdraw from Iraq’s urban areas at the outset, leaving security in the hands of Iraqi police, troops, and militias.

By the end of 2006, according to the plan, 80,000 of the approximately 150,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq would be withdrawn from the country, with all 46,000 National Guard and Reserve units there demobilised and returned to the United States..

The other 34,000 troops would be redeployed – 14,000 to Kuwait and in a Marine expeditionary force located off-shore in the Gulf, prepared to strike at specific terrorist targets; 18,000 to Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban insurgency; and 1,000 each to the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia as part of the broader “war on terror,” according to the 10-page “Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists”.

At the same time, the plan, co-authored by CAP associates Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis, calls for Washington to enlist regional states, including Iraq’s next-door neighbours, in a major diplomatic initiative to ensure Iraq’s stability. Such an initiative should include both Syria and Iran, both of which are considered by the George W. Bush administration to be high-priority targets for “regime change”.

“Strategic Redeployment rejects calls for an immediate and complete withdrawal, which we conclude would only serve to further destabilise the region and embolden our terrorist enemies,” the authors write.

“But Strategic Redeployment also rejects the current approach – right out of (Al Qaeda leader Osama) Bin Laden’s playbook for us – a vague, open-ended commitment that focuses our military power in a battle that cannot be won militarily.”

The report, the result of a series of consultations that began in late July, comes amid growing pressures on the Bush administration to reconsider its determination to “stay the course” in Iraq.

On Sep. 24, Washington hosted more than 100,000 people who had gathered for one of the largest anti-war demonstrations here since the 1991 Gulf War. At the same time, the huge costs associated with relief and reconstruction in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have spurred growing concern in Congress – among Republicans and Democrats alike – about how much longer the Treasury can afford to pay the estimated five billion dollars a month that its presence is Iraq is costing.

A recent series of opinion polls has also shown growing disillusionment with the occupation, with nearly two-thirds of the U.S. public roughly evenly divided between those who favour either an immediate withdrawal or beginning a more gradual draw-down now..

Nor are those who believe Washington must change course confined to Democrats. At a press conference for a new, bipartisan “Homeward Bound” Congressional resolution that calls on Bush to announce a withdrawal plan by December and begin withdrawing troops from Iraq no later than one year from now, five of the 60 co-sponsors were Republican.

Still, the administration has so far rejected any talk of withdrawal and is actively discouraging the military brass from even suggesting, as they have for several months now, that they hoped draw down a substantial number of troops some time in the first half of next year.

“Now is not the time to falter or fade,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Princeton University audience Friday.

With just a few exceptions, leading Democrats, particularly those with presidential ambitions, such as the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, have so far also rejected withdrawal, or even the adoption of a timetable for withdrawal, even as they have attacked the way in which Bush has carried out the war in Iraq.

The result has been a growing divide on the issue between the party’s grassroots activists and its most prominent leaders. Unable to offer a coherent position on Iraq, the party instead has been mostly silent, apparently in the hope that the public will blame only Bush and the Republicans for the ill effects of the war.

It is in that context that CAP is presenting a plan. The fact that CAP’s director, John Podesta, served as former President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and that many of its top national security associates also served in senior positions under Clinton, will not be lost on many here.

“Many Democrats have been fearful of taking any position that can be viewed in any way as critical of the military effort in the middle of a war, while others believe that the U.S. needs to begin withdrawing,” said Jim Cason, an analyst at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a lobby group. “This seems to be designed to split the difference to try to unify them.”

The plan, which is not shy about attacking Bush’s “multiple failures” in Iraq, argues that “the status quo is untenable” but rules out “a hasty withdrawal”, decrying the “simplistic debate centred on a false choice – should U.S. forces ‘stay the course’ in Iraq or ‘cut and run’?”

It also criticises “many Democrats”, who, “scarred by Vietnam, helicopters going down in Iran, and soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, continue to suffer from national security deficit disorder” and, as a result, “are reduced to offering only tactical criticisms of President Bush’s game plan”.

The U.S. troop presence in Iraq, according to the paper, is “actually attracting and motivating America’s terrorist enemies”, while at the same time preventing Iraqi leaders from making the difficult compromises they need to create a stable society. “Not setting a timetable (for withdrawal) is a recipe for failure and sends the wrong message to the (Iraqi) leadership…”

During the two-year withdrawal and redeployment, according to the report, U.S. troops in Iraq would be focused on “core missions” only, including training of Iraqi forces, improving border security, providing logistical and air support to Iraqi security forces; advising Iraqi units; and tracking down terrorist and insurgent leader with Iraqi units.

By the end of 2007, the only U.S. military forces in Iraq would be a small Marine contingent to protect the U.S. embassy, a small group of military advisers to the Iraqi government, and counter-terrorist units that work closely with Iraqi security forces.

The continued presence of U.S. forces in Kuwait and the Gulf would be adequate, in the authors’ view, to conduct strikes with Iraqi forces against enemy targets or “deal with any major external threats to Iraq”.

In addition to the regional diplomatic initiative, Washington should conduct a more aggressive public-diplomacy campaign to counter radical Islamist propaganda, particularly any efforts to depict the U.S. redeployment as a defeat, and increase its support for local civil society groups and businesses in Iraq, according to the plan.