The Secret Plan to End the War

Argue all you want about the presence of al-Qaeda thug Abu Musab al-Zarkawi in Baghdad back when Saddam’s people were listening in on every living room in town. Insist, if you will, that neither this, nor the multiple con-fabs between the henchmen of Saddam and Osama, justified our being alarmed. There�s no doubt that Zarkawi�s there now, and that he�s spearheading those who are killing our troops�and increasingly, a lot of Iraqi civilians. The simple truth is that today in Iraq, we are fighting the same people who attacked us on 9/11. Defeat is not an option.

In left America, however, the one that demands security without vigilance and freedom without sacrifice, 800 combat deaths equal our latest “long national nightmare.” Fortunately, hope is on the way. John Kerry is now offering us a quick fix, a light at the end of the tunnel. He has a Nixonian �secret plan� to withdraw a “significant” number of U.S. forces and replace “most” of them (of those withdrawn or the total, it’s not clear) with allied forces. The giant sucking sound you hear is, yes, another old election reference, as well as the sound of Zarkawi filling the power vacuum in the Sunni triangle.

That’s a major reversal from the hawkish position Kerry laid out here just a couple of months ago, right at the time the media were pressing him, post-primary, on just what he would do differently than Bush (insert reminder here: he voted for the war). Doubt it? I don�t think this devastating video is lying (notwithstanding the cheesy music and cliches).

The idea behind the quick fix is to get our �allies� to replace us. Yes, and as Mencken told us, for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. By allies, I suppose we presume that Kerry means France, Germany, and Canada, but not Russia or China�the latter two would not even pass the cover-your-eyes-and-grimace test in the East Village.

Let�s briefly leap a logical chasm and assume that a Kerry Administration could persuade both France and Germany to send troops, and to keep them there if some of them died. What, then could they send? Germany is currently cutting its troop strength to 250,000 troops, of which 30,000 are deployable overseas. Of those, 9,000 are already deployed, for a difference of 21,000. France has just 138,00 troops. Of those, it can deploy 50,000 to Europe, but only 30,000 overseas, and then only for a year. For a longer deployment, which is realistically what we need, France maxes out at 15,000. And Canada? Their tiny army is already stretched to its limit with U.N. deployments and the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan.

Thus, assuming that France and Germany both supply troops, and both send every last deployable soldat to Iraq, the grand total is 36,000 troops, about a fourth of the U.S. troop strength in Iraq now, and even that is wildly unrealistic, of course. The other �major� military powers in Europe�Britain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and the Czechs–all have troops there now, and we all know the deal with Spain. Politically speaking, Japan is maxed out, and realistically, so is Korea at 600 (given that the promised 3,000, even if they eventually go, will be cooling their heels safely in the Kurdish area). Then, of course, you can consider the Muslim countries, which Powell tells us he’s working on, although Iraq itself has ruled out troops from Iraq’s neighbors. It’s difficult to guess at numbers, and even harder to guess at those troops’ training and fighting abilities. And as the Russians taught us in Afghanistan and Chechnya, large numbers of untrained conscripts don’t necessarily win wars.

. . . which pretty well exhausts the possibilities.

For at least the last paragraph, you�ve probably been saying to yourself, �as if.� As if Germany would suddenly develop a fondness for massive overseas military deployments. As if France would cast aside its near-unanimous opposition to the Iraq war and deep-seated America-hate to mend relations with Monsieur Kerry. As if Canada draft the troops it would need to help us. As if they�d accept combat roles . . . as if, as if, as if. As for me, I�m saying to myself, �Black Hawk Down� and �Srebrenica.� Haven’t we learned that reticent, half-hearted, bickering U.N. legitimacy is no match for small, determined packs of thugs? It�s such a muddled formula for certain unmitigated disaster that you should thank your Creator it�s all so bloody unlikely. And for Kerry, it�s one shift too many on the primary question that would demand his firm leadership. You can’t please everyone, can you?

If you�re one of those who supported going to war but have since gone soft on it, I have a news flash for you. There are times in life when you make the best decision you can with the information you have at the time, and then you stick with it until the job is done. Yes, I want to know where the WMD went. Yes, I want heads to roll at the CIA. Yes, I think we’ve done too much search-and-destroy and not enough pacification. And it’s all completely irrelevant to the question of whether we’re going to let ourselves lose a war to al-Qaeda and thereby prove that they can operate unmolested anywhere they take power. War is hard, we didn’t start it, and this is the Middle East.

But there is also good news, of an ominous sort. Come November 2nd, you will have seen the absolute worst that al-Qaeda and the Ba’athists can do.