Residuals

Chris Bowers has done an excellent job compiling the Presidentials' plans for Iraq, most of which include residual forces of fairly large numbers. While everybody's making noise about no funding without a timeline (good for Edwards and Dodd), boldly and correctly resisting the calls of wavering Democrats who want to drop the withdrawal timeline, the actual question of what will remain AFTER the withdrawal is being elided. Bowers found what amounts to Clinton's post-withdrawal plan, from a think tank closely allied with her, which calls for 60,000 troops remaining in Iraq for three or four years, followed by a year's worth of withdrawal. And the other Democrats in the field have pretty similar plans:

The tasks that Obama lists for American troops to conduct in Iraq are virtually identical to those listed in the Clinton legislation for redeployment, the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, and those proposed by the Center for a New American Security. It appears that both Clinton and Obama would keep 40,000 troops in Iraq for a while if they become President, plus between 6,000 and 20,000 advisors and an always unspecified numbers of private contractors. I actually feel very confident in these numbers at this point, given how they have repeatedly appeared in several sources.

Dodd's plan is also virtually identical to the one proposed by Obama and Clinton... Conditionally, Biden supports exactly the same plan, although he estimates 20,000 to 60,000, rather than 40,000 to 60,000... Edwards goes further than Biden, Clinton, Dodd and Obama, citing the protection of American personnel and the American embassy as the only task he would have American troops conduct in Iraq under his presidency... Of course, Bill Richardson goes even further, citing only the protection embassy green zone as a task for American troops to continue to perform in Iraq. Kucinich appears to have a similar plan.

So, here is the quick breakdown for what the Democratic candidates would have American troops do in Iraq if they become President, and how many troops it would require to perform those missions:

No residual forces outside of embassy protection: Richardson, Kucinich. This would require 5,000 to 10,000 troops, though possibly less, depending on the size of the embassy each would decide to maintain in Iraq.

Residual forces for embassy and personnel protection: Edwards. This would require between 5,000 and 10,000 troops for the embassy, and probably a similar number outside of the embassy. So, 10,000 to 20,000 seems likely.

Residual forces for counter-terrorism, Iraqi troop training, personnel protection and embassy protection: Clinton, Dodd and Obama, plus Biden conditionally. This will require roughly 40,000 troops, plus the number of advisors for the Iraqi military, plus an indeterminate amount of mercenaries private contractors. The Biden plan might require as few as 20,000, depending on the circumstances.

The part that makes you sick about all of this is how it's hidden from public view. It took Bowers a while to dig all this up. If you poll people on what they think the leading candidates would do in Iraq, they think all Democrats would do exactly the same thing: "Start withdrawing troops within the next three months, with all troops out within nine months from now." This is completely untrue in the case of Clinton and Obama, and kinda/sorta untrue in the case of Edwards, though he's closer to that goal. It's the great unmentionable of this campaign. Only Bill Richardson has tried to stake out some ground on this.

The top Democratic candidates are hiding the truth. They want to use the slogan of "end the war" to get votes, but they actually aren't all that interested in ending the war. Or rather, from their perspective, they want to end it "responsibly," which is code for prolonging it several years into the future at which point the same thing happens that would occur if we got out tomorrow.

The lack of voter education on presidential candidate plans for Iraq is both breathtaking and frightening. Unless something changes in the next few months, voters will be in for a rude awakening when they find out that virtually every candidate for President with a real chance of becoming the nominee of either major party, save possibly Edwards and definitely save Richardson, are way more hawkish on Iraq than they are believed to be. Democratic voters might be in for a particularly rude awakening in the general election, or at least some point in 2009, when they find out the candidate they nominated is actually in favor of keeping a substantial number of troops in Iraq.

If Democratic voters become aware of candidate plans for Iraq, and still end up nominating someone who favors a substantial residual force to train Iraqi security and conduct counter-terrorism, I can live with that, even if I will work against it. However, if Democrats end up nominating a candidate who supports a substantial residual forces plan while thinking that candidate will actually withdraw virtually all troops in a short period of time, then basically our party will have been hoodwinked in a manner not unlike the way the war was first sold to the American public back in 2002 and 2003. While that will be incredibly depressing and infuriating, it also won’t be that much of a huge surprise. After all, most of the Democratic foreign policy elite behind the substantial residual forces plan actually helped sell the Iraq war before it began. The obfuscation used to continue American military involvement in Iraq never ceases, and it seems the players involved never change.

This is the essential problem. The Democratic foreign policy bench is woefully thin and incredibly corrupted by warhawks who are part of the problem. I have been giving Obama a second look because of his relationship with Samantha Power, who represents fresh foreign policy thinking. But on Iraq, there's no daylight between Obama and Clinton. Only Edwards has staked out somewhat new territory here, and yet who actually knows that?