By BOB TUKE
a Marine veteran, is chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party.
Tennessean.com
The president needs a plan to get United States troops out of Iraq. He needs to exercise personal leadership to make this happen rather than pushing the decision-making off onto his ground commanders, as he recently proposed to do. It is an inappropriate responsibility to place on ground commanders because the decision will have political and international diplomacy ramifications as well as military.
The president should direct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a real plan with a specific timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals. Such a timetable need not be disclosed, but it must exist. The plan should be cleared by the Defense and State Departments and implemented honestly and forthrightly.
I am a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War. I fought the war (unlike the president, the vice president or any of his senior cabinet officers) in 1971 during the so-called Vietnamization phase. I was part of President Richard Nixon's "secret plan to end the war." It was a fraud and a failure.
George W. Bush's policies appear more and more to be much like Nixon's. He and his defense secretary are fabricating numbers of Iraqi units prepared to fight, exaggerating successes on the battlefield and leaving our troops exposed and under supported, with no real strategic vision.
I was proud to fight for my country and my fellow Marines and for the South Vietnamese, and I would do it again. I commanded a Combined Action Company of one-third U.S. Marines and two-thirds South Vietnamese militia. So I know firsthand how critical it is to train indigenous forces in an insurrection and to be able to depend upon them.
My Marines and I would have been much better served if the U.S. had pursued a coherent strategy of withdrawal in that war. The Bush administration does not appear to be devoting sufficient emphasis to training and does not seem to have strategic deployment objectives in this war either.
Any plan of withdrawal should start with the National Guard and Reserve forces. They have fought bravely, but they have been overused from the beginning. Wars must be fought by young people whose agreed service is clear and whose training is at the highest level. If necessary, regular force recruiting and re-enlistment goals and bonuses may be increased. Congess can cut pork, constrain the Halliburtons or tax those of us most able to pay to pay for this. It will be worth it.
It is essential that a clear strategy involving accelerated training and deployment of Iraqi forces be implemented immediately. Otherwise, the outcome in Iraq for the U.S. probably will resemble the historic outcomes of other nations' invasions of that difficult region (most recently the British). One wonders why this president and his neocon advisers failed to consult with the first President Bush and his advisers, who chose not to pursue the first Gulf War into Baghdad precisely to avoid the insurgency Bush II has ignited.
This Bush also should attempt to engage the international community as part of our withdrawal strategy, although he should expect to be rebuffed since he failed to involve them in the first place. Nonetheless, he should try to emulate the successful strategy President Bill Clinton and Gen. Wesley Clark implemented in Bosnia, which recently approved a new constitution in peace, in spite of divisions among its peoples at least as complicated as those in Iraq.
Finally, let no one accuse Americans who criticize U.S. policy of being unpatriotic. We owe it to our soldiers, sailors, Air Force personnel and Marines to insist upon effective leadership and sensible policies. Criticism is not cowardice; it is a necessary ingredient of effective policy review.
We must remember that withdrawal need not mean failure, but it ultimately could lead to just that, if a coherent withdrawal strategy is not developed immediately.
