Frederick W. Kagan mounts a spirited defense of maintaining our troop commitment to Iraq, presumably part of the battlefield preparation for Gen. Petraeus’s upcoming testimony in Washington. The article is long and detailed—he takes on more than a dozen of the arguments of the immediate withdrawalniks and answers them in turn. Unfortunately, I think it’s a waste of pixels.
Will anyone be convinced? I believe that practically everybody has already made up their minds and at this point relatively few will respond to even the most articulate, soundest, and well-founded arguments. It is now a religious dispute.
Fortunately, it doesn’t look as though any prospective president will withdraw our forces completely from Iraq. No candidate is running on that platform (note in statements the words “combat brigades”, a little over half of our forces in Iraq) and I doubt that any sitting president will be willing to run the risk of withdrawing from Iraq and having things go seriously awry.
If you take the idea that a president will withdraw our troops from Iraq and re-insert them if circumstances warrant seriously, try this exercise. Imagine you’re the president of the United States. Imagine you’ve withdrawn our forces from Iraq. Now imagine you’re standing at a podium preparing to announce that you’re going to send our forces back to Iraq. I can’t imagine myself doing that and I don’t think any prospective president can, either. The questions practically ask themselves. “Were you wrong then or are you wrong now?” leaps to mind.
費(fèi)德瑞克.凱根堅(jiān)決果敢地認(rèn)為我們的軍隊(duì)?wèi)?yīng)該對伊拉克共和國負(fù)責(zé)，可能部分原因是由于彼得雷烏斯將軍即將要在華盛頓發(fā)表有關(guān)戰(zhàn)場準(zhǔn)備的陳述。這篇文章內(nèi)容豐富詳細(xì)——里面包含了十幾個有關(guān)立即撤退的爭論，并且給以有力回?fù)簟２恍业氖牵矣X的這實(shí)在是浪費(fèi)電腦顯示器的象素。
有人會相信嗎?我相信每個人心中都會已經(jīng)有了自己的想法，在這樣的時刻，即使是思路再清晰、語言再動聽、結(jié)構(gòu)再合理的文章，也幾乎沒人會對它做任何回應(yīng)。現(xiàn)在這是個宗教上的爭議。
所幸的是，看來似乎將來也不會有哪個總統(tǒng)會從伊拉克全部撤離我們的軍隊(duì)。沒有哪個候選人會這樣做(注意陳述中“戰(zhàn)斗軍”這個詞，我們在伊拉克軍隊(duì)的一半偏上都是“戰(zhàn)斗軍“)，也沒有哪個現(xiàn)任總統(tǒng)會冒著使情況變得更糟糕的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)撤離在伊拉克的軍隊(duì)。
如果你認(rèn)為總統(tǒng)可以從伊拉克撤離軍隊(duì)，當(dāng)境況變得嚴(yán)重的時候再運(yùn)送軍隊(duì)過去。只是打個比方，設(shè)想一下如果你是美國總統(tǒng)。如果你從伊拉克撤離了我們的軍隊(duì)力量。現(xiàn)在假設(shè)你正站在指揮臺上準(zhǔn)備宣布你將要把我們的軍隊(duì)再次遣送回伊拉克。我自己不能想象會這樣做，而且也相信我們的將來的總統(tǒng)也不會這樣做。事實(shí)上他們的腦海里會閃現(xiàn)這樣的疑問：你開始的指揮是錯的，還是現(xiàn)在是錯誤的?
