NYT op-ed: Time to Offshore Our Troops: Not only from Iraq, but from the entire region

Op-Ed Contributors
Time to Offshore Our Troops
By EUGENE GHOLZ, DARYL G. PRESS and BENJAMIN VALENTINO
Published: December 12, 2006


(Guy Billout)

THE Iraq Study Group’s recommendation that the United States withdraw its combat forces from Iraq reflects a growing national consensus that our military cannot quell the violence there and may even be making matters worse. Although many are hailing this recommendation as a bold new course, it is not bold enough. America will best serve its interests in the Persian Gulf by withdrawing its ground-based military forces not only from Iraq, but from the entire region.

Critics of the report continue to debate the wisdom and details of a drawdown in Iraq, but there has been no debate about America’s broader strategy in the gulf. Policymakers and analysts from across the political spectrum assume that the United States must maintain a robust military presence there.

The bipartisan authors of the report, for example, advocate maintaining “a considerable military presence in the region” including “powerful air, ground and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar” even after the last American combat troops leave Iraq. Others — including Donald Rumsfeld and Hillary Clinton — go further and consider strengthening our forces around the gulf by shifting some troops from Iraq to neighboring countries.

Maintaining a large military presence in the region has been the cornerstone of American policy since the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and remains so today. With the Iraq war, we now have tens of thousands of troops elsewhere in the neighborhood.

But this strategy is flawed. In fact, many of the same considerations that led the Iraq Study Group to call for withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq suggest that the United States should withdraw its troops from neighboring states as well — leaving only naval forces offshore in international waters. As in Iraq, a large United States military footprint on the ground undermines American interests more than it protects them....

(Eugene Gholz is a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas. Daryl G. Press and Benjamin Valentino are professors of government at Dartmouth.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/opinion/12press.html

Now that is a policy change that I could support.