The Democrats in Congress—and the few Republicans who agree with them—who’ve been pushing for a troop withdrawal continue to maintain that what they’re proposing is not only in the best interests of the American people, but it’s in the best interests of the troops themselves.
That would appear to be a no-brainer: surely the best way to protect the troops is to put them out of harm’s way, and that means their leaving Iraq and coming back home where they belong.
But what do the troops serving in Iraq think about it all? Sometimes I’m convinced that the aforementioned Congressional members don’t really much care about the answer to that question.
Those who are pushing withdrawal and the cutting of funds are concerned with a variety of matters, first and foremost politics. But I would guess that some of them do indeed have a sincere concern for the safety of the troops. Unfortunately, that concern is all too often embedded in a combination of patronizing condescension (“those poor, benighted, undereducated, oppressed troops”) and disapproval (“those babykillers, brutes, torturers”).
I’ve searched for polls that might offer some information to answer the question of what the troops themselves think or want, but I’ve found nothing especially relevant. Petitions, either pro-withdrawal or anti (see this and this) tell us virtually nothing except that there are two thousand active military personnel ready to sign the former, and three thousand ready to sign the latter.
There are some older polls that questioned the military on Iraq-related issues, here, but no data on the current withdrawal or fund-cutting proposals. There’s some interesting information available, though; in the most recent poll, which was taken at the end of 2006 among active military personnel (50% of whom had served in Iraq and 12% in Afghanistan). Morale was very high, support for the Iraq War was higher than lack of support, and more people thought success was likely than thought it unlikely.
But to me the most interesting responses were the answers to the following questions: how soon do you think the Iraqi military will be ready to replace large numbers of American troops, and how long do you think the U.S. will need to stay in Iraq to reach its goals?
Only 2% of the troops thought the answer to the first question would be “less than a year,” and only 2% thought the answer to the second would be “1-2 years.” The overwhelming bulk of the responses were in the “3 to 5 years” or even “5 to 10 years” categories, with a substantial minority thinking it might even take more than 10 years to accomplish either goal.
Contrast this with the impatience of Congress and much of the American public, who want it done by September or sooner or it will be “pull the plug” time. The members of the military who bear the brunt of it all understand the difficulty of the task, probably because they have studied the history of fighting insurgencies, guerilla wars, and terrorism far more than most of us have.
And yet, morale is high among them. They don’t have the benefit of easy optimism, but they don’t allow themselves the luxury of easy pessimism, either. I think what they are engaged in is actually realism, and that implies not only an awareness of the length of time this might take, but the extreme importance of the mission.
W. Thomas Smith Jr., a former US Marine infantry leader and now journalist on military matters, has written this piece about Iraq for the National Review. Smith dispenses with some misconceptions the general public, fed on a steady diet of MSM misinformation, have about the Iraqi people themselves. (Also see this article for a list of the accomplishments of the so-called “surge”; they are far from negligible.)
Smith mentions that most of the troops are stunned that anyone takes seriously Reid’s contentions that we’ve already “lost” in Iraq. And he reiterates what so many have said before: premature withdrawal from Iraq (and withdrawal any time soon would, by definition, be premature) would jeopardize the trust our allies (and enemies) have that we will keep our word.
Smith also thinks a premature withdrawal would have a more direct effect on the troops:
Success in Iraq is also about the morale and well-being of the U.S. military. Our forces would suffer in ways most D.C. politicians cannot begin to imagine if we were to retreat from Iraq.
That sort of suffering—the deep frustration of working hard for a vitally important goal and having all possibility of reaching it taken out of your hands just when things are beginning to improve—that sort of suffering is not the concern of those crying that their actions are only to “protect” the troops.
Congress, of course, knows better than those stupid, exploited, brutal (choose your own adjective) troops themselves know about what is good for them.