With Bush's 'Surge' Finally in Place, a Clamor for Results
Now, can Iraq weather the bombing of a key mosque?
Despite that concern, Bush administration officials are being increasingly explicit about the need for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. White House spokesman Tony Snow recently raised the analogy of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, while Secretary of Defense Robert Gates talked about a "protracted" deployment in Iraq. Indeed, some officials argue that an extended stay is essential for the Bush strategy to succeed and that past security plans failed because extremists returned as soon as U.S. soldiers cleared an area and moved to another. "There is no doubt that the United States has to have a presence in Iraq for years to come," says a Bush administration official. "There is a level of U.S. troop long-term presence that is acceptable to the people of Iraq and also acceptable to the people of the United States. But I don't think anyone knows what the number is yet." Some press reports last week suggested that officials were drawing up plans for a "post-occupation" force that could top 40,000 troops, although Bush aides insist that they are focused now only on trying to make the surge work. "It's so obvious to me that George Bush will never want to be the guy to ratchet back our presence in a way that is tantamount to admitting defeat," says Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who follows the U.S. military. "The question is whether the country is willing to fund it."
Tough battles lie ahead in Washington. Democratic leaders said last week that they are planning a new round of votes on proposals to impose timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. The bills face tough hurdles in the Senate (and it will most likely be impossible to overcome a presidential veto). But the skirmishes will foreshadow a bruising funding battle set for September, when next year's budget will be discussed and the first assessments of the surge's full impact are due.
The other potential limiting factor is what kind of deployments the U.S. military will be able to sustain over time (along with the mission in Afghanistan). "There is no way to prove whether or not the force can handle this because there is no statistical data relevant to this level of strain," says O'Hanlon. "We'll probably be able to hold up for at least a few more years of this, but if you're concerned about more intangible questions, such as whether this is fair or not to our men and women in uniform, you may come to a different conclusion."
Of course, all of this could be moot if the Iraqis cannot reach some difficult political compromises. Iraqi political leaders have moved a few steps closer to agreeing on legislation to govern distribution of oil revenues, but the bill is still being blocked. Efforts to loosen the strict law banning tens of thousands of former officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government posts have also run into a brick wall. And a dispute over the forced resignation of the controversial Iraqi parliament speaker, one of the most prominent Sunni politicians in the shaky coalition government, will only further delay the stalled efforts at negotiating reforms to Iraq's Constitution aimed at defusing sectarianism.
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