More troops?

This story is a little bizarre. I admire Michael Gordon and his reporting on Iraq, but there is something oddly detached from reality here.

Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command and one of the retired generals who called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argued that any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months would be more likely to accelerate the slide to civil war than stop it.

“The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this,” General Zinni said in an interview, referring to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. “Well, you can’t put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.”

Instead of taking troops out, General Zinni said, it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to “regain momentum” as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq that would create more jobs, foster political reconciliation and develop more effective Iraqi security forces.

According to Gordon, some "current" military officials are in agreement with that assessment. Burns fails to note, though, that Dear Leader has repeatedly said -- for two years -- that he'll deploy more troops if and when his generals ask him for them. With Rumsfeld gone, they feel free to call for them? That explains the "current" generals, but not guys like Zinni.

In any case, what are we talking here, in addition to the 150,000 already on the ground there? The "several hundred thousand" called for by Gen. Shinseki before the war began? Um, no.

Before considering troop reductions, General Batiste said, the United States needs to take an array of steps, including fresh efforts to alleviate unemployment in Iraq, secure its long and porous borders, enlist more cooperation from tribal sheiks, step up the effort to train Iraq’s security forces, engage Iraq’s neighbors and weaken, or if necessary, crush the militias.

Indeed, General Batiste has recently written that pending the training of an effective Iraqi force, it may be necessary to deploy tens of thousands of additional “coalition troops.” General Batiste said he hoped that Arab and other foreign nations could be encouraged to send troops.

Some military experts said that while the American military is stretched thin, the number of American troops in Iraq could be increased temporarily — by perhaps 10,000 or more, in addition to the 150,000 or so already there — by prolonging combat tours.

10,000? In addition to General Batiste's inspired idea that maybe more jobs would help (who'd a thunk it?), do they really believe adding approximately fewer than seven percent more American troops is going to stabalize the place? Is this more talk from "serious men" on Iraq?

You decide.

Kenneth M. Pollack, an expert at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, also argued that a push for troop reductions would backfire by contributing to the disorder in Iraq.

“If we start pulling out troops and the violence gets worse and the control of the militias increases and people become confirmed in their suspicion that the United States is not going to be there to prevent civil war, they are to going to start making decisions today to prepare for the eventuality of civil war tomorrow,” he said. “That is how civil wars start.”

No, this is how civil wars continue.

The idea of pulling troops out of Iraq terrifies me with visions of a descent into triangular genocide. But this idea that just a few more troops will get the job done strikes me as madness. That we've come to this point is surely indication that we can conduct all the "Iraqi Study Groups" we want, but no one in Washington, at The Pentagon, or behind the sand bags and razor wire of The Green Zone has any idea what we're doing there and how we're going to end this violence that makes us weaker -- and Iraqis (and our troops) deader -- every day.