Orderly or Precipitous? A Plan to Exit Iraq

Anthony Cordesman makes the case that the U.S. should downsize the Iraq mission from 15 brigades scheduled for this summer to 5 brigades by 2010, which will be midterm during the next presidential administration:

IF the United States is to succeed in Iraq, if the Bush administration is to manage a credible transition to the next president and if there is to be any hope of a bipartisan approach to the war there, we need a clear plan to move forward. Good plans cannot guarantee the future, but they can provide good options.

Over the next few years, the United States should seek to decrease its forces from the 15 combat brigades planned for July to no more than five, and reduce their role to a largely advisory one. This would largely eliminate the heavy loss in lives and reduce the cost of the war from $12 billion a month during the peak of the surge in 2007 to about $12 billion a year.

We should also phase out most aid to Iraq by the middle of the next presidency. The United States has already disbursed most of the $20.9 billion it has appropriated for the Iraqi Reconstruction and Relief Fund. And the State Department’s request for economic and security aid has dropped from $2.1 billion in 2007 to $960 million this year and $397 million for 2009. The United States should also give Iraq the military equipment that is already there and too expensive to bring back.

During this process, the United States needs to encourage the various Iraqi factions to reach a political compromise....

Well-timed troop withdrawals and a reduction in war costs, along with credible Iraqi elections, would move the United States down a path that most Americans and Congress would support — one the next president would have a reason to take.

Five brigades would be roughly 20,000 troops, if we count brigade size at the higher end of about 4,000 soldiers.

That sounds a little low to me, given that some analysts have suggested a residual force continent of 70,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq for a decade or more.

The Cordesman plan is driven by domestic political realities, rather than short-term military or long-term strategic needs.

(Extra: Cordesman's plan, which GOES TOO FAR toward the precipitous side, in my view, is apparently rejected by antiwar surrender hawks Spencer Ackerman, Tristero, and Matthew Yglesias, who are unhappy with the New York Times' exclusion of genuine far left-wing antiwar fanatics from Sunday's Iraq symposium. )