By: E & P Staff Until the past few days, "withdrawal" was the missing word in the growing debate over U.S. policy in Iraq. Suddenly, within days, it's on everyone's lips, even if it's only there to denounce the notion.
A headline in The New York Times on the front page of its Sunday Week in Review section asked: "What If America Just Got Out?" Guests on Sunday TV talk shows bantered about it, and columnist Robert Novak repeated his belief that top Bush aides secretly believe it is inevitable, some time next year. Other conservatives roundly denounce the idea.
But one of country's leading military writers, Joseph Galloway, has made up his mind.
In his latest column, Galloway, a Knight Ridder columnist formerly embedded in Iraq and many other war zones, sketched out the only three options the country now faces: double the number of forces on the ground to root out the insurgents (but "no one seems prepared to pursue" the major buildup); continue as we are, taking steady casualties as insurgents grow bolder; or "We get out."
The path Galloway favors is easy to discern from what follows: "A suggestion in one of my recent columns that we begin the withdrawal by establishing American enclaves on the Iraq borders has gained some traction and is being discussed by Army planners, we are told.
"An American withdrawal short of victory would leave the Iraqis to sort things out on their own, and that likely means a civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites while the semi-autonomous Kurds in the north try to stay out of it.
"Withdrawal would end the Republican neo-conservative dreams of establishing democracy, and an American foothold, in the Middle East. An end to their dreams of frightening Syria and Iran into behaving much better.
"It would be a bitter pill for the Bush administration to swallow and one they are unwilling to discuss until the November election is out of the way. But if they win another four years, swallow it they must or see the war and the American casualties drag on endlessly without resolution.
"A withdrawal from Iraq would allow us to reinforce and re-energize the effort in Afghanistan and bolster our ally, Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan,. "The United States needs to bolster security and reconstruction in Afghanistan and prevent the overthrow of Musharraf and the rise to power of Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. Think of Osama bin Laden with his hands on a nuclear bomb.
"Now that would be a very real threat to the United States and its people."
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