Iraq:US military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters if the current troop build-up fails or is derailed by Congress.
Such a strategy, based in part on the US experience in El Salvador in the 1980s, is in the early planning stages and would be adjusted to fit the outcome of the current surge in troop levels, according to military officials and Pentagon consultants.
A drawdown of forces would be in line with comments to Congress by defence secretary Robert Gates last month that if the surge fail, the back-up plan would include moving troops "out of harm's way". Such a plan would be close to the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, of which Mr Gates was a member before his appointment as defence chief. The group was made up of a bipartisan panel, which was created by Congress to make war recommendations. It called for a gradual reduction in US combat forces.
A strategy following the El Salvador model would be a dramatic break from President George Bush's policy of committing large numbers of troops to aggressive counter-insurgency tactics, but it has influential backers in the Pentagon.
"This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence," a senior Pentagon official said. "You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large US force eventually gets to the point that it is self-defeating."
The new round of planning is taking place in an atmosphere of extraordinary tension in the Pentagon, which is grappling with a war about to enter its fifth year and going poorly while straining US forces worldwide. At the same time, the war has created divisions within the Pentagon.
Some support the new commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, who advocates using more US forces to protect Baghdad neighbourhoods, while others back the position of Gen John Abizaid, the retiring commander for the Middle East, who favoured handing responsibility more quickly to Iraqis.
A shift from the build-up and towards a more adviser-based strategy would bring the administration more in line with the Iraq Study Group. Some current and former military officers note that the US has a better record at fighting insurgencies with small numbers of advisers than it does with large campaigns.
"We haven't won too many of these things with big efforts," said a former military officer who has advised the Pentagon, "but we have done all right with the supporting efforts."
Sceptics caution that applying the wrong lessons from El Salvador could be disastrous.
Stephen Biddle of the council on foreign relations said the El Salvador model would not work in Iraq. El Salvador was a fight against a Marxist insurgency. Because Iraq was a civil war between Shia and Sunni Arabs, he said, Bush administration plans built around training the Shia-dominated government forces were bound to fail.
- (Los Angeles Times service)