leetkyle wrote:
i've seen countless posts on what people would do, but i'd love to get them all bunched up in here. i am aware there are similar threads but i couldn't find one that is like this
You are the US President. Your troops are still in Iraq. What are you going to do?
I am not sure what I'd do. If you pull out, Iraq is likely to destroy itself through civil war, but if you stay in - then you could be making each side even angrier. This is a real tough one.
Unfortunately the insurgency in Iraq cannot be won in Iraq. You can't solve a problem if you define it incorrectly. The US-Iraqi War is over - this is not a war against Iraq and it is not limited to civil war either, this is selective or fragmented violent anarchy. Identify the participants and account for them in characterizing the desired outcome. Like it or not this war has a significant 'religious" component and we can't win with a secular response because the idea alone is an abomination to some of the factions commited in Iraq.
The US Military is best when employed offensively. We are too long on a "strategic pause" on the GWOT and it's time to go back on the offensive. For the broad-brush answer I would leave the big cities' internal security to Iraqi's and deploy all Coalition forces outside of the large city limits. Doing this allows a focus on rooting out violent factions and inhibiting illegal border crossing by various interested theo-political parties. This also will reduce the accessibility of US forces by the Demolition Party members. We are in a good spot to keep the GWOT enemy off-balance, easy targets tend to do that, and a redeployment outside the cities can be a step in two directions - extraction or redirection. Any existing local militias should be "legitimized" and deployed on 6 month border security operations keeping some of the mischievious types out of reach of mass targets.
This isn't really much of a change for force activity but it will make many politicians and other people who feel war is like a football game to "sense" we are making "forward" progress and winning battles. Since military action is not going to finish the Iraqi Democratic initiative massive effort to turning the "martyrdom" recruitment tool off must occur.
In short put more distance between enemy and US forces except when the US wants to strike. Then the violent factions will have to kill each other to appear "active and effective" so the terror money will keep flowing...