6/10/15
Iraqi, U.S. and Spanish soldiers participate in a training mission outside Baghdad.
President Barack Obama was elected on a promise of extricating the U.S. military from Iraq — what he called a “clean break.” More than six years later, he’s found there’s simply no escaping the pressure to send U.S. combat forces back.
On Wednesday, the White House announced the U.S. would send 450 more American military advisers, on top of 3,100 already there. It’s the latest in a gradual return of U.S. forces, and the decision underscored Obama’s intent to rely primarily on airstrikes to help back Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State terrorist group, which controls large parts of Iraq and Syria.
But the move, which follows the embarrassing fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, drew immediate criticism from Republicans for not, at minimum, calling for U.S. troops to serve as spotters for air strikes on the front lines. Further exacerbating Obama’s political crisis, Democrats on the other side accused him of unnecessarily escalating U.S. involvement and risking “mission creep.”
“The last thing he foresaw was the need to reintroduce troops into Iraq,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “You probably couldn’t have a more reluctant president to go down that road. But I think he is intent we don’t ignore the lessons of the first war.”
The political pressure to do far more was on display even before the official announcement was made.
In a particularly stinging rebuke, Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, accused Obama of lacking decisiveness and resorting to half-measures reminiscent of mistakes made during the disastrous Vietnam War.
“This is incrementalism at its best — or worst,” said the Arizona Republican, Obama’s White House rival in 2008 who spent seven years in a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam.
The Obama administration defended its approach — and at least for now seemed determined not to be railroaded into another ground war in the same place where 4,491 Americans died between 2003 and when Obama pulled U.S. forces out in 2011.
When pressed on why the latest efforts do not include having American troops serve as spotters for airstrikes or sending Apache aircraft to back up the Iraqi troops, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters the president “has been very clear he’ll look at a range of different options,” but gave no sign such additional measures were imminent.
Instead, he stressed that the White House was most concerned with building Iraqi capacity to take on the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, itself. “The U.S. military cannot and should not do this simply for Iraqis, and, frankly, Iraqis want to be in the lead themselves,” Rhodes said.
Obama will deploy about 450 U.S. troops to Al Taqqadum air base in Iraq’s Anbar province, bringing to five the number of locations where U.S. forces are advising the Iraqis in the country.
The additional troops will have two missions, defense officials say: “advise and assist” the Iraqi commanders of a unit that will be charged with retaking the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah and reach out to local Sunni tribes to “facilitate” them joining the Shia-led Iraqi government’s fight against the Sunni militant group. The goal is for Sunnis to either join Iraq’s army or take up arms on their own as part of the fight against ISIL.
“What we’re trying to do here bring the Sunnis into the fold – into the tent,” said Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren.
So far the U.S. has trained more than 8,900 Iraqi troops, defense officials say, with more than 2,600 others in the pipeline. The challenge, they acknowledge, has been getting enough recruits from the Baghdad government to take full advantage of the American trainers already in Iraq. At one base in western Anbar Province, Al Asad air base, the American troops haven’t had any Iraqis to train for about three months.
Obama also authorized the “expedited delivery” of weapons and materiel to Kurdish and tribal fighters, the White House said, which American officials hope will get arms into the hands of fighters quicker.
“Ultimately, these Iraqi forces will enable Iraq to better defend its citizens and retake its territory from [ISIL],” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The decision effectively puts on hold a push north up the River Tigris to the ISIL stronghold of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city — possibly until next year. But the step does not represent a major shift in strategy, U.S. officials say, which also includes an ongoing effort to train and arm rebels to take on the militant group inside Syria, embroiled in a four-year civil war.
It is for that reason that hawks pounced. Fred Kagan, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute, called the move “ridiculous” and unlikely to make any real difference on the battlefield.
Kagan, who supports embedding U.S. spotters with the Iraqis to improve the effectiveness of the air campaign, believes the president has yet to “recognize the situation has changed completely from what it was when he took office.”
“He came to office having made an ill-informed campaign promise that presumably reflected his beliefs at the time,” said Kagan, who helped devise the so-called “surge” of U.S. troops into Iraq in early 2007 to beat back the insurgency, which included Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to ISIL. “He stuck to his own timeline.”
Kagan said he believes the Iraqis can carry on the fight against ISIL, but “I think they need more assistance than we are providing.”
“We have an interest in defeating ISIL whether [the Iraqis] are worthy or not, or whether they are standing up or not,” he added.
McCain, in his remarks likening the approach to Vietnam, noted that three-quarters of the attack sorties in the U.S.-led air campaign are returning without dropping their bombs.
“We will continue to see 75 percent of the combat missions flown return to base without having discharged their weapons, since we have no one on the ground to identify targets,” he claimed. “It is reminiscent of another war, another time many years ago, where under then-Secretary of Defense [Robert] McNamara this same type of strategy prevailed.”
Rep. Scott Rigell, a Virginia Republican who represents one of the highest concentrations of military constituents, said he is fully aware that “the president faces a very difficult scenario. It is a complex set of forces we are up against, with different loyalties.”
“Having said that, the president’s very public admission of not having a strategy this far into it is not what the American people want to hear,” he said. “Absent a clear plan to essentially piecemeal it without an overarching and underlying comprehensive strategy, I’d say it’s unwise at this point.”
Obama’s new steps got a better reception from some in his own party who believe the militant group, which has gained adherents elsewhere in the region, poses a grave threat.
“I think it is a reasonable one, but it needs to be accompanied by a renewed Iraqi commitment to include the Sunnis,” said Schiff, who opposes sending U.S. spotters to the front lines.
He maintained that U.S. military assistance alone is not going to translate into successfully defeating the group, which capitalized on neighboring Syria’s ongoing civil war to push into Iraq. “We can send all the trainers we want and embed troops with Iraqi forces, but if the Sunnis don’t think they can be protected both from ISIL and the Shia militias, there is no way of successfully peeling them away from ISIL,” Schiff said. “We can win battles, but they won’t stay won in the absence of political change.”
What he sees lacking in the new steps is a quid pro quo with leaders in Baghdad; namely, that in return they will make the necessary political changes to build a more inclusive Iraq.
“I think we would be crazy not to use the leverage of our military assistance to compel the Iraqis to make the political and sectarian accommodations they need to,” Schiff said. “We should not be helping the Shia take on the Sunni.”
Those who fear the U.S. is getting pulled into another ground war they believe is not America’s to fight were glum in the wake of the White House announcement.
“It represents an escalation,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, an anti-war Democrat from Massachusetts, calling it “incremental mission creep.”
“We are going to establish a military base. We are getting closer and closer to the front lines,” McGovern said. “This won’t be the last deployment. It will continue to increase.”
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