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Troop withdrawals from Iraq to slow

By putting the brakes on troop withdrawals from Iraq and shortening combat tours, US President George W. Bush has thrust his war strategy into a holding pattern through January, when a new commander in chief with a new defense team will begin setting his or her own course in Iraq.

The next administration will face the same Iraq complexities, but not necessarily the same circumstances or same choices. The dynamic nature of war makes it all but certain that the battlefield situation will be different, for better or for worse, when the next president enters the White House on Jan. 20.

What is unlikely to change much by then is the size of the US force in Iraq. The current total of 160,000 is scheduled to shrink to about 140,000 by the end of July, but big cuts beyond that are unlikely. The 140,000 figure is several thousand higher than has prevailed through most of the five-year-old war.

In his speech on Thursday, Bush made clear he is in no hurry to reduce the force. He said his field commander will have “all the time he needs” to consider when to resume a troop drawdown.

It is no surprise that Bush would see merit on going slow with troop reductions, given the tenuous nature of the security gains his strategy has achieved over the past several months and the fact that both Democratic contenders for his job have pledged to pull out of Iraq and end the war. The higher the starting point for a pullout under a Democratic president, the longer it would take.

Bush asserted that his strategy, to put an extra 30,000 troops in Iraq and place a higher priority on establishing security in Baghdad, has “renewed and revived” prospects for success.

Democrats remain unconvinced that Bush’s approach will force the Iraqis to settle their differences, which Democrats believe will come only with a declared US policy of winding down the war.

“What the president did today was to reinforce America’s open-ended commitment in Iraq by suspending troop reductions for an unlimited period of time,” said Democratic Senator Carl Levin.

In his view, that perpetuates an Iraqi dependency on US help and eases pressure on them to reach a political settlement.
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