# Posted 10:29 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE BEST POSSIBLE ARGUMENT FOR WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ: Barry Posen is both a professor at MIT and unquestionably one of the foremost experts on international security in the United States if not the world. In the current issue of the Boston Review, Posen has a long and sober essay on why it is in our national interest to withdraw almost all of our soldiers from Iraq in the next 18 months.

For adamant supporters of our mission Iraq (such as myself), Posen's essay is eminently readable because it traffics in none of the partisan cliches and holier-than-thou rhetoric of so many of the war's critics. More importantly, it confronts head-on the most powerful argument against a premature withdrawal from Iraq, namely the prospect of both a bloody civil war and the establishment of Al Qaeda sanctuaries under Sunni protection.

Although I won't pretend to be truly open-minded about the situation in Iraq, I think that being able to process the arguments made by Posen and respond with meaningful analysis is an important challenge for all those who continue to support the war. That said, I would like to comment on Posen's essay in the traditional manner of the blogosphere, by taking on its main arguments paragraph by paragraph.

I think the best summary of Posen's essay is its second sentence:

The war is at best a stalemate; the large American presence now causes more trouble than it prevents.

The first subpoint under this heading is Posen's assertion that the American presence in Iraq provides an incentives for the Iraqi government to let America solve its problems. Hence:

Iraqi politicians will not apply sustained pressure to their security forces to improve themselves so long as they know that the Americans will remain to protect the state from the insurgents...

[And] how do the insurgents do so well with no large training bases, no safe place to organize, no secure electronic command-and-control network, and only the weaponry they can obtain covertly? The answer is almost certainly motivation. The insurgents care more about ejecting the United States than Iraqi politicians and soldiers care about stopping the insurgents—in part because the Iraqis can rely on the United States to do it for them.

The argument that American patronage creates an incentive for irresponsibility on the part of its clients is grounded in a fair amount of historical evidence. Yet I am concerned that Posen assumes that this pattern has held true in Iraq even though he does not provide much evidence.

No less important is the absence in Posen's essay of one of the most important indications of just how serious the Iraqis on our side our about fighting the insurgency: the number who continue to die, day in and day out, fighting at our side. Even though suicide bombers repeatedly target police and military recruiting stations, young men continue to congregate there in impressive numbers to volunteer for service.

To a certain extent, Posen might welcome such indications that the Iraqis on our side are already willing to fight. Such evidence would justify Posen's remarkably optimistic conclusion that:

An interval of 18 months provides ample time for the United States to help the Iraqis complete the project of training and organizing an army capable of maintaining internal security...if Iraqis—especially the Shiites—are motivated by the knowledge that they will soon be on their own, they can achieve such a capability with a year’s hard work...

In wartime, Western armies have forged new units in a year or less for much more demanding tasks. Even the Iraqi army under Saddam grew at a furious pace under the pressure of the war with Iran...Necessity and threat are powerful motivators.

Yes they are. Yet I am very much concerned that Posen's implicit comparison between the new Iraqi army and the old -- let alone any comparison to Western forces -- fails to take into account the fact that the new Iraqi army simply does not have the human infrastructrue necessary to train a viable force. Established armies can forge new units because they have experienced an officer corps that can both train new recruits and then lead them in battle.

Imagine the change in tenor if Iraqi recruits knew that their American instructors would abandon them once 18 months had passed. Would such recruits want to stay and fight knowing that they would suddenly be left to battle the insurgents on their own, without American support in the field? No less importantly, would the Iraqi recruits trust their American instructors?

All in all, the motivation provided by sheer necessity would be a poor substitute for the confidence that comes from being well-trained and well-led.

To be continued... (10) opinions -- Add your opinion