America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement

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Notes

¹ The December 2006 US Army and Marine Corps Field Manual No. 3-24 on counter-insurgency is available at http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf.

² These data derive from a 2007 unclassified internal US government briefing memorandum made available to the author.

³ Iraqi support for attacks on US-led forces grew from 47% in January 2006 to 61% in September 2006. This 14-point change was due in large part to a 21-point increase among Shi'ites. ‘The Iraqi Public on the US Presence and the Future of Iraq’, World Public Opinion.Org , 27 September 2006, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf.

⁴ Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate ‘Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States’, April 2006, available at http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/wdc/documents/terrorism/keyjudgments_092606.pdf.

⁵ See, for example, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, ‘U.S. Image Up slightly, But Still Negative’, 23 June 2005, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=247; and 'Arab Attitudes Toward Political and Social Issues, Foreign Policy and the Media (University of Maryland/Zogby International Poll), October 2005, http://www.bsos.umd.edu/SADAT/pub/Arab%20Attitudes%20Towards%20Political%20and%20Social%20Issues,%20Foreign%20Policy%20and%20the%20Media.htm.

⁶ When asked in an interview on CNN what affect a Senate resolution against the president's new ‘surge’ plan would have, Cheney answered: ‘It won't stop us’. Interview with Wolf Blitzer on ‘The Situation Room’, 24 January 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/24/cheney/index.html. In response to a question by Senator John McCain about the likely outcome in Iraq should the US announce it would withdraw within 4–6 months, General Petraeus warned of ‘greatly increased ethnic cleansing’, ‘the very real possibility of involvement of [other] countries’, as well as the possibility of an international terrorist organisation ‘getting a grip on some substantial piece of Iraq’. Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Nomination of Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus, 23 January 2007.

⁷ Gates told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on 12 January 2006 that ‘the timetable for the introduction of additional US forces will provide ample opportunity early on – and before many of the additional US troops arrive in Iraq – to evaluate the progress of this endeavour’. Statement of Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates Senate Armed Services Committee, Friday 12 January 2006, p. 5, http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2007/January/Gates%2001-12-07.pdf.

⁸ ‘US facing defeat, says al-Qaeda’, BBC News, 9 September 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3642910.stm; ‘Al-Zawahiri: U.S. faltering in Afghanistan’, 9 September 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/09/zawahiri.tape/index.html.

⁹ Joseph Lieberman, ‘Why We Need More Troops in Iraq’, Washington Post, 29 December 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/28/AR2006122801055_pf.html.

¹⁰ Quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 260.

¹¹ Stephen J. Hadley, ‘Baghdad is Key’, Washington Post, 29 January 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007012800922_pf.html.

¹² Text of US Security Adviser's Iraq Memo, 29 November 2006, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29mtext.html?ex=1170651600&en=1f804dd505468937&ei=5070.

¹³ It would take almost the entire planned troop surge – 20,000 of the 21,500 soldiers – to begin to secure Iraq's borders, using the number of US Customs and Border Protection and National Guard personnel on the US–Mexico border as a guide. And even then, the level of security would be no better than that at the Mexico border. Even though the agents and soldiers on the US–Mexico border know the terrain well and many have a command of Spanish, they apprehend only about one-third of those who get across the border. It would take time for a US border force in Iraq to gain corresponding advantages. Calculations based on data provided by the CIA World Factbook .

¹⁴ UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Human Rights Report, 1 September–31 October 2006.

¹⁵ Based on FY2005. Congressional Research Services, ‘The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11’, 22 September 2006, p.16, available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf.

¹⁶ Michael Abramowitz and Lori Montgomery, ‘Bush to Request Billions for Wars’, Washington Post, 3 February 2007.

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Steven Simon

Steven Simon is Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from Steven Simon, After the Surge: The Case for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq , Council Special Report no. 23 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, February 2007), and is used with permission. A version was prepared for a Council on Foreign Relations/IISS Symposium on Iraq's Impact on the Future of US Foreign and Defence Policy, with generous support from Rita E. Hauser.