(CFR) Season of Change for Iraq Policy

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http://www.cfr.org/publication/12305/season_of_change_for_iraq_policy.html?breadcrumb=%2F

Season of Change for Iraq Policy


New Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Iraq this week to discuss U.S. troop levels. (Photo: AP/ DoD, Cherie A. Thurlby)
December 22, 2006
Prepared by: Robert McMahon


Change is in the air on Iraq policy, just as violence there is reaching its highest level, according to a Pentagon report. Robert M. Gates spent most of his first week as defense secretary visiting with U.S. troops in Iraq (AP) as well as Iraqi leaders.

He is due to deliver new recommendations to Bush soon on troop levels and other tactics. Bush says he is considering an expansion of the U.S. Army and Marines but will not send more troops into Iraq without a "specific mission." The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes says Bush has reacted positively to a plan spelled out by Retired Gen. Jack Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. The plan requires a substantial increase in ground forces and calls for changing the U.S. focus from training Iraqi soldiers to “securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence.” At the same time, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are said to be against a force “surge.” (WashPost)

As changes to U.S. troop deployments were discussed, there was new scrutiny on their rules of engagement, with eight Marines, including four officers, charged in connection with the deaths (LAT) of twenty-four Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha. CFR’s Lionel Beehner looked at the legal aspects of the Haditha case in this Backgrounder.

Meanwhile, it is less than two years since President Bush’s second inaugural address promised an American foreign policy dedicated to spreading democracy. As little as three months ago, he addressed from a UN podium “moderate reformers across the broader Middle East” with a hopeful message on democracy. Yet the Bush administration’s freedom agenda appeared to suffer a grievous blow in the past month amid damage control on Iraq, hastened by a resounding defeat of Republicans in midterm elections, and a bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s grim assessment of U.S. progress in Iraq.

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