Gene Healy and Justin Logan argue in Reason that exhortations to stay the course in Iraq should at the very least be accompanied by a discussion of the likely costs.
Here's a significant excerpt:
The president and other proponents of the current "stay the course" strategy have noted that withdrawal from Iraq could bring with it serious costs in terms of American credibility and Iraqi lives. They're right. But they've been silent on what price America should be willing to pay to avoid those costs. Any serious conversation about what to do in Iraq cannot focus simply on the costs of exit; it must consider the costs of staying. How long will it take? How many soldiers is the mission worth sacrificing? And can the mission be accomplished?On October 2, Gen. John Abizaid, CENTCOM commander, noted that the insurgency is "certainly alive and well." And what little hard data is available paints a bleak picture: From May until August, the number of daily attacks by insurgents hovered near the all-time high, then skyrocketed to a new high in September. Even so, President Bush warns that "we can expect there to be increasing violence" over the coming months.
Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said insurgencies like the one we face in Iraq generally require 7 to 12 years of fighting. The Defense Science Board, the Pentagon's research agency, is even more pessimistic: Remaking "disordered societies, with ambitious goals involving lasting cultural change, may require 20 troops per 1,000 indigenous people" for five to eight years. Twenty troops per 1,000 people in Iraq comes out to around half a million U.S. troops—about 350,000 more than we have available. Even staying the current course at current troop levels, according to the Congressional Research Service, could cost $570 billion by 2010.
More important by far are the human costs of a protracted occupation. Thus far 2,000 American soldiers have been killed and many more grievously wounded. At current casualty rates, even five more years in Iraq translates to nearly 4,000 more dead Americans. Is that a price we're willing to pay to "stay the course"?
Understandably, the current situation has placed great strains on recruitment. In the fiscal year that just ended in September, the Army National Guard and Army Reserve fell short by more than 17,000 recruits combined. The active duty Army experienced its worst recruiting shortfall since 1979. It responded by doubling the number of recruits it accepts who scored extremely poorly on mental aptitude tests. In congressional testimony earlier this year, assistant secretary of the army Richard A. Cody said "what keeps me awake at night is what will this all-volunteer force look like in 2007?" This summer, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey predicted a "meltdown of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve in the coming 36 months." Is that a price we're willing to pay to "stay the course"?
Opponents of leaving Iraq point out that we have a moral obligation to Iraq: We broke it, and now we've bought it. This point is compelling, and difficult to face. It is indeed awful that so many Iraqis are suffering as a result of the war, and might suffer more if we left. But is there a ceiling on the costs we should be willing to pay to fulfill that obligation?
The entire piece is well worth reading, and it contains many links that you might want to follow. I've already stated in this blog that I favor withdrawal by the end of 2006. As far as I can tell from what I've been reading, our continuing presence in Iraq does more to inflame than defeat the insurgency. If this is so, then the logic is plain.
Furthermore, since I've always thought that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government would put the country on a slow path to civil war, I've never held out much hope that our military intervention woud succeed in building a democracy. If the Iraqis are determined to fight each other, that's not our concern. Let them fight it out, if that's what they choose to do.
