Dunkirk in the desert

It has become fashionable for politicians of both parties — mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans, as well — to promise the rapid removal of U.S. forces from Iraq. In fact, a sort of bidding war has broken out with would-be presidential candidates outdoing each other to come up with ever-shorter timelines for the abandonment of our positions there. A few examples:

Democratic presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson: " I would withdraw all of our forces, without any residual troops, by the end of this calendar year."

Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards: " I would continue to draw combat troops out of Iraq over the course of about the next 10 months."

Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton, speaking on the recently defeated Iraq withdrawal bill: " I support the underlying bill [to cut off funding after March 2008]…This is consistent with what I’ve been saying for several years."

Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul: " I’d come home. I’d just get out of there."

Even the Bush administration has reportedly begun contingency planning to start a draw-down this fall — irrespective of the circumstances on the ground — in response to an expected domestic political imperative demanding what is euphemistically called a "new strategy" come September.

As it happens, the only way a truly rapid disengagement and redeployment from Iraq can be accomplished would be via a kind of Dunkirk in the desert: a pell-mell rush for the beachhead points of embarkation the object of which would be to extricate as many personnel as possible, probably without regard for their equipment and surely at the expense of their safety.

A report last week on, of all places, National Public Radio made clear why the alternative — an orderly, careful and proper redeployment of most, let alone all U.S. forces in Iraq simply cannot be done any time soon. Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s Morning Edition program featured a story by Pentagon correspondent, Tim Bowman, entitled, "Logistics Mean an Iraq Exit Can’t Happen Quickly." Citing several unnamed current Defense Department officials and a retired officer who managed the last withdrawal from Iraq and Kuwait in 2001 after Operation Desert Storm, Bowman reported that it will take at least ten to fourteen months for the United States fully to withdraw from Iraq.

That, it turns out, is the best case. Consider a few factors that will preclude the sort of hasty pull-out Washington’s armchair generals are promising the public: First, every piece of equipment and machinery has to packed and cleaned. Believe it or not, the cleaning must be sufficiently scrupulous so as to ensure that not a single grain of desert sand is transported out of the Middle East, lest it carry bacteria or diseases back to U.S. shores.

The process of preventing such contamination requires first a thorough power-washing (which can take up to an hour) followed by an inspection of the cleaned gear (which can take considerably more than an hour, depending on the complexity of the equipment). This procedure may have to be done twice, if the tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, helicopters, etc. are to be removed via Kuwait. Naturally, conditions have to permit the cleaned equipment to be removed without getting sandy all over again.

Second, while a larger number of American forces were removed from the region in just seven months after the first Gulf War, part of that redeployment was effected through ports in Saudi Arabia and possibly in Kuwait that would not be available this time around. Huge backups at overwhelmed embarkation facilities would no doubt result if our units in Iraq were obliged to pull out in an unduly compressed period.

Third, and most importantly, under the approach to withdrawal advocated by virtually all Democratic leaders and several prominent Republicans, Americans will surely be retreating under fire. As Tom Bowman put it, Americans "would likely have to fight insurgents overland, all the way to Kuwait." This endeavor, according to one officer quoted by NPR, would require "attack helicopters [and] recon helicopters in the air, possibly tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and, of course, armored Humvees [on the ground]" providing protection for the disengaging forces.

The result would almost certainly be calamitous. It may even be that the United States military would be subjected to the reverse of the notorious "Highway of Death" of Desert Storm, albeit on a smaller scale. Perhaps a few legislators still recall what happened to Iraqi Republican Guard and other units who were fleeing along a fixed road system in Kuwait and came under murderous Coalition fire — until JCS Chairman Colin Powell, unnerved by negative publicity, ordered U.S. forces to cease their assault. There is no likelihood that al Qaeda and other terrorists will be similarly moved to pity our troops should they be forced by politicians at home to make a similar evacuation.

When Americans voted for "change" in Iraq last fall, surely this is not what they had in mind. We can only hope that, if American troops must run the gauntlet while abandoning Iraq in order to meet some politically and arbitrarily imposed deadline, they will be welcomed home in much the same way as were British forces who survived the evacuation known as the "miracle of Dunkirk" in 1940. The warning offered on that occasion by Winston Churchill would be even more fitting for our time: "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations."

If the prospect of leaving behind chaos and genocide on an unimaginable scale in Iraq is not enough to dissuade our leaders from cutting and running from the fight there, perhaps that of a calamitous and bloody retreat under fire for U.S. forces will do the trick. After all, it will be utterly untenable for any to profess that they "support the troops" if the predictable consequence of their actions will be to subject those troops to a devastating — and strategically catastrophic — Dunkirk in the desert.