Edward Luttwak has proposed what sounds to me like the best solution possible for the mess in Iraq.
Fortunately, there is a promising, long-term policy ready and waiting for President Bush whenever he decides to call off the good old college try of his surge: disengagement. By this, I don’t mean a phased withdrawal, let alone the leap in the dark of total abandonment. Rather, it would start with a tactical change: American soldiers would no longer patrol towns and villages, conduct cordon-and-search operations, or man outposts and checkpoints. An end to these tasks would allow the greatest part of the troops in Iraq to head home, starting with overburdened reservists and National Guard units.
The remaining American forces, including ground units, would hole up within safe and mostly remote bases in Iraq — to support the elected government, deter foreign invasion, dissuade visible foreign intrusions, and strike at any large concentration of jihadis should it emerge. This would mean, contrary to most plans being considered now, that United States military personnel could not remain embedded in large numbers within the Iraqi Army and police forces. At most, the Americans would operate training programs within safe bases.
Sounds good to me also. There used to be a blogger over on Polipundit.com that was a Col in the Army reserves and he said that unless current regulations are changed very soon there will be no guard and reserve personnel available for deployment to Iraq. It seems that the regs currently limit guard and reserve personnel to two years(accumulative) in any one theater of operation and most guard and reserves are at or near that limit. If the regs are changed it could seriously harm the guard and reserves as they would in effect not be reserves anymore and most may decide it is not what they want to do anymore.
Hi Rob–
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of the regs about reserve personnel.
Thanks for the info.
MRE