Anti-government protests in Baghdad turned violent last Friday. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi survived an assassination attempt on Sunday. Iranian-linked militants are suspected.
Despite the political chaos and violence, U.S. leaders reassure Baghdad that our military support will remain resolute. What Washington should be doing, however, is prioritizing U.S. security and prosperity and planning the withdrawal of the small contingent of U.S. troops still in Iraq.
The trouble plaguing Iraq’s political landscape runs deep. A popular myth is that the Islamic State arose because President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. As I have detailed elsewhere, however, the collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces in June 2014 to a small band of ISIS fighters was overwhelmingly caused by sectarian policies enacted by then-Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.
Obama showed poor judgment in sending U.S. troops back into Iraq in 2014. Troops were later sent to Syria. ISIS posed a direct threat to Baghdad and Damascus when ISIS captured territory in both countries. ISIS did not, however, pose a threat to the U.S. that our global counterterrorism capacity could not have adequately handled. President Donald Trump inherited about 500 U.S. troops in Syria when he assumed office and later increased the number to 2,000 to help the Syrian Democratic Forces retake the Syrian territory held by ISIS. In Iraq, Trump ultimately deployed about 6,000 U.S. troops to help Iraq retake territory lost to ISIS.
These U.S. troops accomplished their tactical objectives, depriving ISIS of all its territorial holdings in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria by 2019. At this point, Trump should have withdrawn them.
But owing to significant institutional pressure in Washington, Trump kept our military deployed in both countries for the remainder of his term. After taking the tough but praiseworthy action to withdraw from Afghanistan fully, President Joe Biden is now poised to extend the unnecessary deployments in both Iraq and Syria. The reasons given for staying by administration officials are concerning. They continue to base our combat deployments on the needs of foreign capitals and not on specific U.S. interests.
The goal of the mission going beyond 2022, a White House official said, is the “enduring defeat of ISIS.” This objective is the opposite of an exit plan.
The U.S. first began to train the Iraqi military in April 2004. Just three months into this effort, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies published a report decrying the “inexcusable level of failure on the part of the U.S.” to train Iraqi security forces. Five years later, I commanded a small training team of U.S. military experts in helping to train an Iraqi border battalion opposite Iran. I personally observed that the Iraqi military had made virtually no progress since 2004.
In 2019, the inspector general for the Pentagon’s Operation Inherent Resolve admitted that the ISF, despite years of training, were “largely unwilling or incapable of holding terrain” even after U.S. troops had defeated ISIS in numerous locations. Just two months ago, that same inspector general wrote that its investigators “reported that [Iraqi] security forces made ‘no significant achievement’ in their ability to carry out operations independently.” Special Forces aside, the Iraqi Security Forces, even with thousands of U.S. advisers, billions of dollars spent, and the better part of two decades of effort, have made minimal progress.
Even if the U.S. provided another two decades of support, it is unlikely the ISF would materially improve. Continuing to keep U.S. troops in Iraq keeps them in the crosshairs of would-be attackers, whether from Iran or violent extremists in Iraq, who have limited reach and would be unable to target our troops if they weren’t stationed there.
It is entirely unreasonable to continue asking our service members to risk their lives and limbs for a mission detached from U.S. security that can never be accomplished. It’s time to acknowledge reality and conduct a professional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America. Follow him @DanielLDavis1.
