The unreality of the cut and run chorus

Max Boot:

One of the unfortunate aspects of any primary race is that it forces candidates to move to the fringe to appeal to their party base. That is now happening with regard to Iraq in the Democratic presidential contest. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have show themselves distressingly eager to play to ill-informed antiwar sentiment - and more so as time goes along.

...

Obama has now put forward a plan to get all American combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. Clinton was asked at the January 16 debate in Las Vegas whether she would join in that pledge. Her response:

"Oh, yes, I'm on record as saying exactly that, as soon as I become president, we will start withdrawing within 60 days. We will move as carefully and responsibly as we can, one to two brigades a month, I believe, and we'll have nearly all the troops out by the end of the year, I hope."

Of course she did say "nearly all the troops" not "all the troops," and, as we've learned over the years, with a Clinton the exact wording of any statement needs to be carefully studied for possible loopholes. Obama has likewise said that, while he will remove all U.S. "combat troops," presumably referring to the 19 Brigade Combat Teams, he will leave a residual presence: "I will end the war as we understand it in combat missions. But that we are going to have to protect our embassy. We're going to have to protect our civilians. We're engaged in humanitarian activity there. We are going to have to have some presence that allows us to strike if Al Qaida is creating bases inside of Iraq."

That makes it sound as if Obama and Clinton favor leaving a few Marine guards at the U.S. embassy and a few Special Operations teams based either in Iraq or in a neighboring country.

This is a position so utterly disconnected from the on-the-ground reality I discovered in Iraq during a recent 11-day visit that it boggles the mind. The ability of our forces to rout Al Qaeda during the past year was due precisely to abandoning the Special Forces-centric approach we had utilized in the past. Instead of relying on a handful of commandos swooping in from afar, General Petraeus sent large numbers of combat troops to live in Iraqi neighborhoods. This created a sufficient degree of security to allow residents to rat out Al Qaeda terrorists without committing suicide.

...

Imagine what would have happened in the Korean peninsula if the U.S. and its allies had withdrawn all combat troops in 1955. What are the odds that South Korea would have remained independent? Probably no higher than the odds in South Vietnam, where we did withdraw all combat troops in 1973. Within two years the war was lost.

...

The only reason to do what the Democrats want to do is that they want to lose in Iraq. They want it to become an example of why the use of force should be avoided. Right now it is becoming an example of how to defeat insurgency warfare. This latter example is one that could help the US prevent future wars because adversaries would not want to engage us in a war that they would lose. The Democrats would give these adversaries hope. That will be a much more costly mistake than any made in Iraq to date.