The Weekly Standard Tries Reality

William Kristol and Robert Kagan try reality in the Weekly Standard online. Leaving the dumb assumptions, deceptive historical analogies, and ad hominem attacks aside, the neo-conservative stalwarts make a determined empirical case for increasing the number of troops in Iraq. It's too bad that Kristol and Kagan decided to try reality so late in the game. Still, their analysis is worth taking seriously.

Kristol and Kagan's idea is that 50,000 more American troops would be needed to stabilize Baghdad and then they could engage in clear and hold operations in Western Iraq. If we withdraw over the next two years, the authors argue plausibly that President Bush would handing over both a genocidal ethnic cleansing and a series of al-Qaeda havens to his successor.

They've not so plausible when they suggest possible invasions by Iran and Turkey. Who besides the Bush administration would have enough hubristic stupidity to occupy Iraq now?

Still, the American military now has almost 15,000 troops in Baghdad. Fifty thousand more would increase the number to 65,000.

Would they have a chance of success?

Probably not.

The problem is that stabilizing Baghdad would mean launching an invasion and occupation of Sadr City, the slum stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. While defeating the Mahdi Army wouldn't be that much of a problem, attacking Sadr City would be a serious problem. Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army have become a major pillar of Nouri al-Maliki's Iraqi government. Attacking Sadr City would weaken Maliki, weaken the Iraqi military and police forces (many of whom would fight with al-Sadr), and make the Iraqi government much more dependent on the American military.

Likewise, once American troops occupy Sadr City, they would have to hold it against a large, determined, and trained (largely by the Americans) Shiite resistance movement. Kristol and Kagan think that the 50,000 American troops could move on to Anbar once Baghdad was stabilized. It's more likely that the U. S. would need the 50,000 troops to hold Baghdad and 100,000 more troops to perform operations in Anbar--50,000 to clear out the insurgents and another 50,000 or more to occupy and hold the Sunni cities.

The problem here is that raising the number of American troops from 150,000 to 250,000 or 300,000 would require the Bush administration to put the United States on a war footing. The Bush administration did not have the credibility to do this in 2003 when it was first needed. As last Tuesday's election shows, the Bush administration has far less credibility with the American public now.

A new administration would have to be in place before any big increase in American troop levels could be contemplated. Even then, it's not very likely that the American military could stabilize Baghdad or the country as a whole.