President Bush has declared that “as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” But decreasing coalition troops while increasing Iraqi troops is not necessarily the correct exit strategy for Iraq.
The US is creating a force of light infantry. Increasing use of Iraqi troops has its own advantages : they may be better placed to collect intelligence and will possibly be more acceptable to the Iraqis they are protecting. But it will not constitute an army and will not be able to conduct a counterinsurgency by itself for many years.
Further, the Iraqis are heavily dependent on the US army:
For example, it appears that efforts to establish Iraqi logistical elements are lagging badly behind the formation and training of light infantry units. Iraqis thus rely on coalition logistics when they must move from their home bases - or, more commonly, they simply do not move from those bases at all. Their transportation assets are minimal, and so they lack the ability to project their forces within Iraq. As a result, they would not be able to concentrate force rapidly in particularly violent areas or to destroy insurgent concentrations quickly. For as long as these conditions hold, the U.S. military will remain an essential part of the struggle against insurgency in Iraq.
Worse, Iraqi soldiers are becoming dependent on the kind of fire-power that only the Americans can provide:
It is also important to understand that the current Iraqi forces rely heavily on the availability of responsive U.S. airpower. They do not have their own organic fire support (artillery or aviation), and so must wait for the American soldiers embedded within their formations to call in coalition air support when they run into any sort of serious opposition.
Many of the skills needed to fight a determined insurgency - planning and conducting large-scale raids and sweeps, coordinating the activities of multiple infantry units, and using artillery and air power - take years to learn.
To judge the right moment to withdraw from Iraq by counting the number of Iraqi soldiers is not an accurate method of assessing Iraq’s ability to stand alone. At present there are many situations in Iraq that only the US and its allies can handle effectively. It is likely to be this way for years to come. Whatever the invasion finally achieves, a too-soon withdrawal could ruin it all.
