The U.S. military is in the hands of crackpot commanders; see benefit of Korea model

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Gates, U.S. General Back Long Iraq Stay

U.S. Presence Said to Reassure Allies

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 1, 2007; A11

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and a senior U.S. commander said yesterday that they favor a protracted U.S. troop presence in Iraq along the lines of the military stabilization force in South Korea.

Gates told reporters in Hawaii that he is thinking of "a mutual agreement" with Iraq in which "some force of Americans . . . is present for a protracted period of time, but in ways that are protective of the sovereignty of the host government." Gates said such a long-term U.S. presence would assure allies in the Middle East that the United States will not withdraw from Iraq as it did from Vietnam, "lock, stock and barrel."

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who oversees daily military operations in Iraq, supported the idea at a news conference in which he also said U.S. military units are trying to reach cease-fire agreements with Iraqi insurgents.

Odierno said he sees benefits in maintaining a South Korean-style force in Iraq for years. "I think it's a great idea," he said, adding that the Iraqi and U.S. governments would have to make that decision.

"That would be nothing but helping the Iraqi security forces and the government to continue to stabilize itself, and continue to set itself up for success for years to come, if we were able to do that," Odierno told Pentagon reporters in a videoconference from Baghdad.

The comments represented the second time this week that administration officials invoked the American experience in South Korea in citing the need for a long-range U.S. military presence in Iraq. Concerns that U.S. forces might stay for a lengthy period have provoked considerable controversy in the region.

Yesterday's statements echoed those by White House press secretary Tony Snow on Wednesday. Snow had sparked quick criticism from Democratic lawmakers and liberal activist groups when he said that President Bush envisions a troop posture in Iraq similar to that in South Korea.

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Bush's Korea model for Iraq shows he's "seriously out of touch with both history and reality"

Iraq Is Korea?

Bush's latest appalling historical analogy.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, May 31, 2007, at 6:45 PM ET

It's no news that George W. Bush and his handlers don't know much about history, but their latest stab at pretending otherwise is among their most ludicrous.

At a press conference on Wednesday, White House spokesman Tony Snow said that President Bush thinks Iraq will develop along the lines of "a Korean model," and defined that to mean a situation in which the United States "provides a security presence," and serves as a "force of stability," for "a long time."

Let's set aside for a moment whether the comparison is valid—much more on that to come—and ask why on earth Bush would make it. Huge numbers of U.S. troops have been in South Korea for 57 years. Do Bush and Snow really mean to suggest that U.S. troops will still be stationed in Iraq in the year 2060 and beyond?

Now back to the merits—or rather demerits—of the analogy. In 1950, the United States beat back North Korea's invasion of South Korea, became embroiled in a Chinese-assisted guerrilla war, fought the Communists to a stalemate, and, in 1953, after suffering 54,000 combat deaths, negotiated a truce (but not a formal peace). Ever since, American troops—at present, 37,000 of them, stationed at 95 installations across the Korean peninsula—have remained on guard at the world's most heavily armed border.

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, overthrew its regime (which posed a hypothetical threat), and, in the four years since, has kept about 150,000 troops in the country to kill terrorists (who weren't in Iraq before the war), to train the Iraqi army (which the Bush administration, for still-mysterious reasons, dismantled at the occupation's outset), and to keep a "low-grade" sectarian civil war (which erupted amid a vacuum of authority) from boiling over.

In the half-century-plus since the Korean armistice of 1953, just 90 U.S. soldiers have been killed in isolated border clashes in Korea. In the mere four years since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, more than 3,000 American servicemen and women have been killed, and the number rises every day.

To sum up, we intervened in South Korea as a response to an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to contain Communist aggression. We intervened in Iraq as the instigator of an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to expand unilateral American power. We remained in South Korea to protect a solid (if, for many years, authoritarian) government from another border incursion. We are remaining in Iraq to bolster a flimsy government and stave off a violent social implosion.

In other words, in no meaningful way are these two wars, or these two countries, remotely similar. In no way does one experience, or set of lessons, shed light on the other. In Iraq, no border divides friend from foe; no clear concept defines who is friend and foe. To say that Iraq might follow "a Korean model"—if the word model means anything—is absurd.

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