Many Troops Would Stay In Iraq if a Democrat Wins

By Yochi J. Dreazen
The Wall Street Journal
February 29, 2008; Page A4

Washington -- Despite the rhetoric of the Democratic presidential
candidates, significant numbers of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq
regardless who wins in November.

In their final push to win the nomination, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois
and Hillary Clinton of New York are repeating their vow to start withdrawing
U.S. forces shortly after taking office. But both candidates draw a
distinction between "combat" troops, whom they want to withdraw, and
"noncombat" troops, who will stay to battle terrorists, protect the U.S.
civilian presence and possibly train and mentor Iraqi security forces.

Conducting such missions would likely require the sustained deployment of
tens of thousands of American military personnel, foreign-policy advisers
from both campaigns acknowledge.

"No one is talking about getting to zero," said a foreign-policy adviser to
Sen. Obama.

The upshot: When voters go to the polls in November, they will face a stark
choice about the future direction of the Iraq war, but they won't be able
bring American involvement to a quick end.

Republican front-runner Sen. John McCain was an early and vocal advocate of
the Bush administration's troop "surge," which deployed an additional 30,000
combat troops to Iraq as part of a broader shift to a counterinsurgency
strategy.

If elected, Sen. McCain has said that he would maintain the current
approach, which focuses on protecting Iraq's population by having small
units of American troops live in neighborhoods and towns. That would mean
keeping U.S. troop levels at or near 130,000, roughly the number deployed
there since the start of the war in 2003.

The two Democratic candidates, by contrast, want to abandon the
counterinsurgency approach. Both say they will begin withdrawing combat
troops shortly after taking office and will shift the remaining U.S. forces
to a more limited mission that won't include explicitly trying to deter
Iranian activity within Iraq or moving against Shiite militias responsible
for much of the country's carnage.

Sen. Obama, on his Web site, says that the drawdowns would begin
"immediately" and continue at a pace of one to two brigades -- which each
normally number between 3,500 and 4,500 troops -- per month. He hopes to
have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, or by
the middle of 2010.

Obama foreign-policy adviser Dennis McDonough says the Democratic
front-runner wants the residual U.S. forces to focus on counterterrorism --
largely directed against al Qaeda in Iraq, the homegrown extremist
organization responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians --
and protecting the enormous U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Mr. McDonough says Sen. Obama is open to leaving additional forces in Iraq
to train and advise Iraqi security forces, but only if the Iraqi government
takes steps to reconcile the country's sectarian groups. Absent such
progress, Sen. Obama would halt the training effort, he said. "Our support
wouldn't be open-ended," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Sen. Obama.

Mr. McDonough declined to say how many troops Sen. Obama hoped to have in
Iraq after the initial 16 months of withdrawals. But another senior adviser
said that Mr. Obama was comfortable with a long-term U.S. troop presence of
around five brigades, which -- depending on the numbers of support troops
and other personnel -- would likely leave around 35,000 troops in Iraq.

Sen. Clinton takes a similar approach and promises to begin withdrawing
combat troops within 60 days of assuming the presidency. Lee Feinstein, the
Clinton campaign's national security director, says "the principal focus" of
the remaining U.S. forces will be fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq.

U.S. forces would no longer patrol Iraqi streets and towns or seek to
prevent sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis, or between Arabs and
Kurds, he said. "Our troops will not be there to patrol a civil war," Mr.
Feinstein said.

Mr. Feinstein declined to say how many troops Sen. Clinton wanted to leave
in Iraq, but said that they would be there "in sufficient numbers to carry
out the more limited set of missions."

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