CLS Fellow Brian Palmer discusses the Iraq drawdown and the United States’ ongoing mission – and responsibility – there. He says:
Changing the name of the mission from Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn (or Kitten Lips or Hugs ’n’ Snuggles) and retagging some of the units “Advise and Assist Brigades” is more semantic than substantive, a kind of aspirational renaming. Just because we say combat has ended doesn’t make it so.
This “drawdown,” which leaves 56,000 US troops in the country (dropping to 50,000 in the coming weeks) and commits more private military contractors, seems to be the clearest element of our amorphous Iraq policy. Our national strategy continues to off-load responsibility to the Iraqis for their own security. That’s as it should be at this point. But there’s more to it. This sloughing off also seems to exclude robust and specific commitments to help repair Iraq after seven-plus years of a war we started.
Read the piece in full here.
