Pentagon
17 March 2008
As the Iraq war passes its fifth anniversary this week, the U.S. military is bracing for a transition that will reduce its combat power in Iraq by more than 20 percent by July, as the surge forces President Bush deployed last year end their tours of duty. The question for officials, military officers and analysts is whether the security gains the surge brought can be sustained with fewer U.S. troops in Iraq in the coming months, and perhaps even fewer as the year goes on. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.
In January of last year the situation in Iraq was spiraling out of control. The main subject of debate was whether the country was in a civil war, or only verging on civil war. A growing number of experts and members of Congress were calling for a U.S. withdrawal. But President Bush went the other way.
"I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq," he said. "The vast majority of them - five brigades - will be deployed to Baghdad."
It was a huge gamble, in both military and political terms. And it was accompanied by a change in tactics to a new, untested counterinsurgency strategy.
Now, more than a year later, the surge is ending with the lowest level of violence in years, the lowest U.S. casualty rates in years, progress on Iraqi political issues that had been stalled for years and more involvement by Iraqi security forces than at any time since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Flournoy says the coming months are a key period for political progress in Iraq on such pending issues as revenue sharing between the central government and the provinces and planning for local elections. U.S. officials say there has been what they call "bottom up" reconciliation, rather than the "top down" type of legislated reconciliation they had originally wanted. Now, experts say, the parliament must follow through on what individuals, tribes and provinces have done. If that happens, Flournoy says, military commanders tell her the end of the surge should not affect the security situation, and further drawdowns of U.S. and coalition forces could be possible.
"The next president could inherit a situation that would allow a substantial drawdown without having Iraq backslide into civil war," she said. "But that means that we have to play our cards very prudently and very well between now and then, and I'm not reassured that we're doing that."
By the sixth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there will be a new government in Washington. Analysts and officials say whether that government will be able to continue to reduce the U.S. military role in Iraq without causing instability there will very much depend on whether the Bush administration, in its final months, can continue to build the Iraqi security forces and can successfully push the Iraqi government toward the kind of broad reconciliation that has so far been lacking in spite of the security gains.