Obama Sets End of Iraq Combat For August 31st

eldavojohn writes "President Barack Obama has announced that on August 31st the United States will cease all combat operations in Iraq, although 50,000 troops will remain until the end of 2011. It's been a long seven-and-a-half years, with no guarantee of this announcement actually signifying the end of violence. Pundits are already speculating on whether or not this withdrawal speech is 'Mission Accomplished 2.' It's possibly the most significant confirmation of and commitment to a withdrawal the world will hear from the United States in Iraq."

Comments

Re:Eight Killed Today

[NevarMore]

How many people were killed due to gang related violence in Chicago this week?

Re:End of violence?

[stewbacca]

I have trained the Iraqi security forces (military and civilian) and they are pretty much not trainable by western standards. You have grown men/working professionals who don't know their right from their left. You spend one week trying to teach them military drill that takes the average 8th grader 20 minutes to master. Add a loaded rifle and an "Insha Allah" attitude, and you only make everything worse.

Granted, they have pretty severe brain-drain in that country. All the smart ones left years ago (in the 80s, then again in 1990, then yet again in the 2000s). If security ever improves, I have several friends and colleagues that would go back. The problem is, security won't improve without the likes of them returning and bringing their advanced degrees back to their homeland. It's a total "chicken-or-the-egg" conundrum.

Re:Finally

[PyroMosh]

Rachel Maddow made some interesting points on her week in Afghanistan a few weeks back. Some things I hadn't heard or read elsewhere.

1) The distribution of wealth is nonexistent in Afghanistan. All the war money is making a few Afghan nationals wealthy. There's a great clip of her walking with Richard Engel outside of these huge gaudy mansions. The mansions were all built by folks who got rich off of the war. Yet the streets outside them are unpaved, and there are trash heaps everywhere and open sewers. Government services are nonexistent even in this neighborhood full of mini-castles.

2) Although the war has dragged on, and we haven't made much progress since 2002 / 2003ish, much of the blame may lie in the fact that the U.S. was distracted by, and had vital resources diverted to Iraq. Much more progress in training the Afghans has apparently been made in the past year than the previous five years. Lots of mistakes were made in the prior years, in both training, counterinsurgency strategy, and general winning of hearts and minds.

The biggest question behind the second point is "is it too late now?". Let's assume for a minute that the folks Maddow talked to are right. We now have the secret sauce that eluded us for years under bush. We now know what to do in Afghanistan, where as before, we just hadn't figured it out yet. If we could go back in time and tell ourselves this plan in 2002, I'm sure this would be helpful. But that's not the case. We now have to implement this plan, not under a blank slate as we had in 2002, but in a country that's been occupied by us for 8+ years now. With all the bitterness and resentment that comes from all the mistakes we made in the past.

If we have the secret formula, can it work, or has the public opinion of the Afghan population turned so far as to be irreversible?

There's one more interesting thing, also from Richard Engel on Maddow's program. This is an exchange from October 9, 2009:

ENGEL: Eight years have passed, and I think you have to also compare this strategy, which was really--it's an old strategy but it was refined in the war in Iraq by General Petraeus. And it was a strategy of winning hearts and minds by protecting the people.

MADDOW: Right.

ENGEL: And General McChrystal often talks about protecting the people that should be the focus. Continue to kill bad guys, as the military likes to say, but try and convince the people that they should be fighting the enemies themselves.

MADDOW: Right.

ENGEL: And that--that happened in Iraq quite successfully. The big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that, in Iraq, there was a civil war and one side, the Sunni Arabs, found themselves on the losing side of the war and needed protection. They needed American help and they were very therefore receptive.

(CROSSTALK)

MADDOW: . sought it out.

ENGEL: They sought it out.

MADDOW: Yes.

ENGEL: It was--they were reaching out to the Americans and said, "Please help us. If you do, we will help you." So there was a deal that was arranged.

And when Gen. Petraeus arrived in Iraq with his extra 30,000 troops, he found and helped created a 100,000 strong militia that joined up with him to fight against al-Qaeda in that case because this militia felt it had no other choice, that it is better to sign up with the Americans than to lose the civil war in Iraq. It is not a comparable situation that you have in Afghanistan for a variety of reasons.

MADDOW: Well, there's no civil war.

ENGEL: There's no civil war. The Taliban generally don't bother and don't threaten the local population. So if you're - put yourself in the position of a U.S. platoon leader on the ground.

You go and knock on someone's house in southern Afghanistan or eastern Afghanistan, the most dangerous parts.

And you say, "I'm here to protect you."

And the Afghan might say, "Well, who are you pro