Declaring Victory, Going Home

Decades ago, while a callow young reporter, I noted favorably that "the
late, great Senator George Aiken" had once famously and wisely offered a
solution to America's Vietnam quagmire: "Declare victory and go home."

I was wrong on two counts: first, what Aiken - a conservative Republican who
was Vermont's Senator from 1941 to 1975 - actually said was, "the United
States could well declare unilaterally ... that we have 'won' in the sense
that our armed forces are in control of most of the field and no potential
enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam." He
added that such a declaration "would herald the resumption of political
warfare as the dominant theme in Vietnam.... It may be a far-fetched
proposal, but nothing else has worked."

And second, far from being 'late," Aiken was still alive... A few days
later, I was greatly chagrined to receive a note thanking me for remembering
him while gently pointing out that he was "not dead yet!"

I was reminded of the incident this week, when Colonel Timothy R. Reese, a
senior American military adviser in Baghdad, concluded, in what the putative
Paper of Record termed "an unusually blunt memo" wisely offering a solution
to America's Iraq quagmire, that it is time "for the U.S. to declare victory
and go home."

Unlike Senator Aiken, Colonel Reese's conclusion is late--but better late
than never. It comes at a time when American combat troops have just met a
deadline to withdraw from Iraq's cities -- supposedly the first step toward
assuming an "advisory role." His memo "details Iraqi military weaknesses in
scathing language, including corruption, poor management and the inability
to resist Shiite political pressure," the New York Times noted. Reese argued
that extending the American military presence beyond August 2010 would do
little to help the situation. "As the old saying goes, 'Guests, like fish,
begin to smell after three days,' " he wrote. "Since the signing of the 2009
Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we
now smell bad to the Iraqi nose."

Unfortunately, while some military officers do endorse Reese's assessment,
despite the stench his superiors - including General Ray Odierno, the senior
American commander in Iraq and his Commander in Chief, Barack Obama -
apparently do not. A spokeswoman for Odierno told the Times that the memo
did not reflect the official stance of the United States military, and
American forces are now slated to stay in Iraq for years.

Why should we listen to Colonel Reese and not General Odierno or President
Obama? Perhaps because he served as the director of the Combat Studies
Institute at Fort Leavenworth, the Army's premier intellectual center - or
perhaps because he wrote an official Army history of the Iraq war. But
Odierno and Obama plan to ignore him. Instead, they will keep the
approximately 130,000 American forces in Iraq at least until the national
elections in January. Even after that, 50,000 troops will remain there,
including six brigades whose "primary role' will be to advise and train
Iraqi troops. (Oh, I get it - they won't be combat troops, they will just be
military "advisers." Hmmm...that sounds very familiar -where have I heard it
before?)

Other experts, like Stephen Biddle, a former adviser to General David
Petraeus, disagree with Reese and say we should pull out troops even more
slowly. After all, "U.S. leverage is a function of U.S. presence," as Biddle
wrote in a recent paper. And Iraq's prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
indicated during a recent appearance at the United States Institute of Peace
that he foresees a possible role for American forces even after the current
December 2011 deadline for the removal of all American troops!

Colonel Reese argues instead that all American forces should withdraw by
August 2010, pointing out, "If there ever was a window where the seeds of a
professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long
past. U.S. combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient
influence to change it."

So who's right -- the military and political forces that want to prolong our
long national nightmare in Iraq as a means of extending American presence
and leverage there, or the expert analyst who literally wrote the book on
the U.S. Army's history in Iraq?

Colonel Reese - and the now late, but still great Senator Aiken -- had it
right. Out Now!