Centerfield

Capsule take, rush job.

1] violence up, stability down, everything else suffering accordingly. Border states would have lower incentive to either assist or support--or not interfere for their own reasons. "Just over the horizon" is a loser. It would take weeks to stage and re-deploy any significant ground forces from "over the horizon" in the case of a crisis. Total loss of rapid-response ground capability, lessened effectiveness of rapid-response airstrike capability and precision (no ground coordination, much reduced operational intel).

2] Staying put provides support for stability, if only by providing a distracting (and "hard") target for the insurgents. It's popular to claim that the insurgents are only fighting us, but that's bull. They want democracy out of Iraq, we're the visible and most hated symbol of that. If we left, the odds of civil war with outside (AQ) interference ala Afghanistan would be heightened immensely. The Baathist/Sunni factions want back in the saddle, the majority Shia won't let that happen, the Kurds would start sealing borders and proclaiming independence. Iran and Syria at minimum would both want a piece. And once the Kurds got rowdy, Turkey would want in on the action. Jordan and Saudi Arabia would get (more) unsettled.

3] See #1. Plus, Syria and Iran would be much freer to pursue their own regional agendas.

4] I think the question's too broad and needs clarifying. But it's obvious to me that withdrawal would be very destructive of service morale--I remember the Carter-era military. It wasn't pretty. Your mileage may vary.

5] Current deployment restricts our short-term ability to project large numbers of forces to other areas. Withdrawal would restrict our ability to be taken seriously at all for years to come.

my quickie and then back to work

1a) hard to tell - there's violence fatigue in Iraq but there's always the extremist idiots running around.

1b)Greater instability which actually may bring about resolution sooner. Unfortunately I think the Iran friendly Islamists will prevail....

1c)Much better and a lot faster - biggest compaint is that the Americans and contracotrs are taking their time and the price is way too high. Locals are chomping at the bit to do work that they should be doing in the first place.

1d Turkey more nervous, Iran more active in Iraqi politics, Syria the same. Saudis will cover their asses by giving lots of money to the same kind of extremists that acted on 9/11

1e Not a bad idea - will create a bit of a security blanket for Iraq yet the main complaint, that the US is an occupying force, will be neutralized.

2 The longer we stay there the worse it's going to get. see 1e

3 Troops in Kuwait, Turkey, etc.

4 Clusterfuck - We're losing a lot of experienced people in battle and through retirement. We're relaxing recruitment standards just to fill boots. There will need to be a rebuilding period. The army the Clinton administration built has been used up. There also needs to be a better definition of service. Some of these folks have served up to 3 tours. These guys need a vacation.

5 We've lost the coinage of diplomacy. That will take decades to rebuild. The sooner we withdraw and start the diplomacy the better.
Continued deplyment limits out options militarily and diplomatically as they are intertwined in many cases.

I'm assuming withdrawal means 6-12 months.

Quickie. I will repond to some of the juicier points and clarify my opinions when time allows.
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1.Withdrawal.

1a. Increase of sectarian violence. Death squads. Quick withdrawal=civil war. Slight lessening of insurgent violence.

1b. Instability. Ethnic divides. Good chance of a theocracy. Bad stuff. On the other hand there is always the possiblity that they would realize they need to get their shit together quick. I doubt it though.

1c. Influenced by instability. It will be awhile before Iraq can maintain its own infrastucture. They are going to be relying on foreign investment which tends to shy away from instability.

1d. Turkey=strong border stance. Crackdown on Turkey's Kurdish population.
Iran=political meddling.
Syria=Sunni support.
Saudi Arabia=?

1e. I'm having a hard time imagining what that horizon would be. None of the mideast states are going to let us station troops. Afganistan maybe, but flyovers of Iran wouldn't work out. Navy based in the gulf? I can't imagine a quick strike from anywhere except in Iraq. None of the Euro contries would let us station troops for Iraq work. Kuwait wouldn't let us stay for long. Having a permanent US base is against the interests of any mideast country including Israel.
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2.Stay (no stated withdrawal date).

2a. Continuing or rising insurgency. Continuing jihadism. As long as we are there we are going to be dealing with it.

2b.Increasing stability. Slight lessening of ethnic tensions. (Long term project). Slight lessening of possiblity of theocracy. (If we are serious about "democracy" it is out of our hands.)
Continuing federalism. Best bet at human rights (despite Abu Grhab).

2c.Holding action on infastructure.

2d. Less chance of interference from neighbors.

2e. Not required.
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3. Withdrawal would embolden neighbors to regress from any progress they have made.
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4. A long term engagement is bound to lessen new signups. Withdrawal wouldn't help. The damage has been done. Recruitment would be helped if we would pay the military what they are worth.
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5. Withdrawal=disaster. Stay=current course. It's a wide world. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I would say 'no one said it was going to be easy', but I can hear the Cheney comments now. I thought he was making a terrible mistake when he said that. The war was already sold.

From Aljazeera:

At the end of the three-day meeting sponsored by the Cairo-based Arab League, the Iraqi leaders called for the withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq by immediately setting a timetable for gradually rebuilding Iraq's armed forces.

I haven't done any checking around to see what this actually means. Aljazeera is pretty good at spinning double talk.

After the Iraqi security forces are independently capable of securing the population within their own borders, then the "over the horizon" force will be able to make some contributions to the overall security of Iraq.

But prior to that, it won't contribute much at all. You don't get actionable intelligence without the compliance and cooperation of a supportive population; you don't get the support of the population without a footrprint (whether US, Coalition, or Iraqi) to interface with the indigenous leaders and build a healthy relationship with the locals. What you would get is a US force staged somewhere, waiting for the intelligence from which to launch a quick strike, but that intelligence would never come in. They'd wind up playing a lot of spades and Play Station.

After the Iraqi forces have assumed responsibility for certain areas, then they'll have responsibility for interfacing with the locals and gaining intelligence upon which the Coalition could act. But until then it would do very little to affect the mission. I'm not surprised it was proposed by an old guard military man-- they have a tendency to think we can win a counterinsurgency through an attrition-based search and destroy strategy (which, BTW, is one of the reasons we lost Vietnam, while the more flexible British adapted and overcame in the Malayan Emergency).

More than anything, I think it's mostly there to make its supporters feel like they're not "cutting and running" when, in fact, that is precisely what the effect would be.

And now for a much longer post:) A lot of this will go to Ben's observation that a lot more information would be useful.
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a) Level of violence:

To answer what effects withdrawal/staying would have we have to know where the violence is coming from, for what reasons, what are the origins, and who is driving it? Where is its funding (munitions and money) coming from?

Saddam and his post war planning-

Days before the war Saddam released the criminal element from the jails. He armed the citizenry. We estimated the elite Republican Gaurd at about 15K. Jihadism was low to non-existant. AQ had little to no presence. What were his plans? (Surely there is some paperwork we have found regarding his planning). He went underground which suggests he thought he would be able to outlast us. His condition when we found him would argue he underestimated the time we would stay. How many of the Gaurd actually took part in the first days of the war? Were their marching orders to fight or did they go underground with him? We were worried he would blow the dams, burn the oilfields, and situate his army to create house to house fighting. None of this occured initially. He definately had the money and means to put up a much more prolonged fight than he did. We found huge caches on money, and are still finding caches of weaponry. Most of his commanders have been killed or captured.
We have outlasted Saddam and any plans he made. His initial plans contribute very little the present level of violence. If his Republican Gaurd went underground with him most of it has transferred to the insurgency. The violence by the criminal element he unleashed is not likely to grow or decrease whether we stay or not. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the violence is from criminal activity. Other than the money, weapons, and loyalists he left behind, Saddam's initial plans play little part in the present violence and would not be affected by our withdrawal either way.

The insurgency-

Who comprises the "insurgency"? As previous, how many of these are Saddam loyalists? How many of these are previous Iraq military? How many are men off the street taking up arms? How much of the insurgency comes from Iraq nationalism verses occupation? How much did de-Baathification contribute to the insurgency? Is the insurgency's direct target the US military or the government we set up? Would it fade away if we left? How many groups whose goals are wholly their own are hiding under the veil of insurgency? Is the insurgency entirely nationalist? How much of it is due directly to Syrian Baathists, or Iranian mullahs? Are an other nation's interests served by having an Iraqi insurgency? Are jihadists interacting with the insurgency?

Would the insurgency fade away if we left Iraq? We know _some_ things about who comprises the insurgency, but we tend to lump a lot of disparete forces under this label. Was/is Badr an insurgent? I would say that far less than half of the forces we call the insurgency are acting against the US occupation with a main goal of getting the US to withdraw. US withdrawal is a step towards the ends they hope to achieve. The longer we stay, the farther their goals get from their reach the more desperate they become. And the goals vary. Baathists want to regain power or simply apply revenge. Badr and others want to gain power in a new Iraq. Sunnis had it good and feel outraged they lost material advantage. In some cases violence becomes the goal in itself.

In some cases the violence level would go down if we left. In many others, especially when the goals relate to other things than removing the occupation, it would go up. Withdrawal would not eliminate the violence of the "insurgency".

Sectarian violence-

Sectarian violence, the main cause of the fear of a civil war, or certainly the flash point, is fairly well controlled at present. If US forces were to withdraw before an Iraq government that is able to deal with sectarian divides and a strong police force is set up, the level of this type of violence would increase dramatically. At present the death squads that have been formed by various factions can not operate openly because of the US military. It is the only thing holding them in check. Tribal warfare and revenge killings would be widespread if we left. There is the strong possibility that full scale civil war would follow. The stated goal of having an Iraqi military able to stabilize Iraq has to do mainly with this problem. One of the problems in forming that military is integrating its forces. Integration has to be _imposed_ at the start. It is a longer process than simply forming and training a military, and needs a very strong central government if the US is not present.

Immediate withdrawal would be an almost certainty of civil war.

The anit-American faction-

The central provinces, where most of the violence exists, or is coming from, can be expected to have a strong anti-US feeling. The general populace in this area has suffered the most from our intervention. Despite our good intentions the general populace would like us to leave. In general they don't like what we have done to them. Expect the level of violence to drop precipitously from this faction when we leave. At least temporarily. It's not likely their lot will improve rapidly once we leave though. The infrastucture is weak, and won't be rebuilt in a short time. After a certain amount of time resentment will be transfered to the Iraq government.

Funding-

Would there be a drop in funding of violent factions in Iraq if the US were to leave? How able are we to intercept some of the money and munitions coming into the country at present? Would the Iraqi government be able to control it as well as we do? Can we do as good a job outside of country as we can in country? Who are these funds coming from?

We are much more able to control the munitions and money coming into Iraq from within Iraq. There would be more funds coming into Iraq targeted towards violence if we weren't there.

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Would the level of violence go up if we withdraw? In balance, yes. Will it go down if we stay? Over the long term, yes. If we can set in place a stable strong government. We may be able to start withdrawal over the next year, but if we want to truly succeed at stabilizing Iraq, and the mideast as a whole, we will be there a long, long time. There are things we can do to lessen our footprint, and partially mitigate the sense that we are occupiers, but we will be taking casualties for as long as we are there. Will the violence continue? What was the death toll in LA yesterday? Expect Iraq's to remain higher than that. What constitutes an acceptable level of violence? When does that need to be achieved? Is there a point at which our presence becomes counter-productive?

As most posters have noted, there are no easy answers to these questions. There are far too many if/then qualifiers that go into it. Only the most extreme elements are calling for immediate absolute withdrawl; therefore, debating that possibility is a waste of resources. The Republicans, Democrats, and now Iraqis are simply asking for a game plan at this point, and that's where productive disputation should reside.

They were talking about the Iraqi demands for a withdrawl timeline on NPR this morning. They were very specific that they don't want a timeline so much as defined milestones for withdrawl. They want a list of goals set up and as those goals are accomplished, we reduce our troop numbers accordingly.

One thing we need to keep in mind in this debate is that we have no intention of leaving Iraq in the foreseeable future. We will eventually end the occupation, but we are entering a military relationship with the country, redeploying our troops into the Middle East and using Iraq as the launching pad for the effort of Democratizing the region. We're going to have some major bases stationed in that country for decades to come.

Echo Ryan. The idea that we would not want a base or two in Iraq is naive. It's up to the Iraqis to decide if we get 'em, but you can be sure we want 'em. Even if it's just one air base for regional "force projection."

Iraq still sits between Syria and Iran. The best Iraqi defense against their neighbors is some small continuing American military presence that would make us palpable allies, and make attacking Iraq the same as attacking, say, Korea.

Agreed it would be good to keep a presence in peacetime, but there is going to be a lot of pressure from the world, region, and within Iraq for the withdrawal to be a _complete_ one. Notice the deals being made now. Our complete absence from the country may be a negotiating point.

I posted these and other responses to these questions at my blog.

1. What would the effect of withdrawal be on Iraq in terms of:

a)the level of violence in Iraq

The immediate effect of withdrawal would most likely be destabilizing to provinces where the US presence acts to reassure minorities that they are protected. Other areas where jihadists cause the majority of violence would lose their main hard targets and initially disperse, but it is clear that the presence or absence of US troops does not definitively prevent civilian-targetted bombings (witness Jordan's recent tragedy). In sum, the pattern of violence would shift, but it's not clear the total level of violence would change markedly. What matters more long term than the level of violence, though, is the political implications of what violence occurs.

b)political developments in Iraq -- stability, healing or exacerbating the ethnic divide, more secular or theistic leadership, unified state (if that indeed should be our goal), human rights, emergence of liberal-democratic institutions

Withdrawal of US forces would provide a great test of the institutions we have helped the Iraqis set up. The underlying question is legitimacy--at the moment the authority of the central government is no longer bolstered by US boots, has it built up enough of its own legitimacy to stand or not? Legitimacy in this context is closely tied to familiarity and trust. It takes time for ethnic Kurds to deal with Shia or Sunni leaders over issue after issue, gradually experiencing fair treatment and adherence to agreed-upon rules, until trust accumulates. Only people intimately involved with both parties will have a sense of the extent that this has happened. The greatest value, then, in US participation in these talks is not to affect the actual outcome of the constitution or specific policies, but to attain the intelligence of the parties' level of trust, which is so key to determining if the central governement can withstand the shock of US withdrawal.

3. What effect would withdrawal have on political developments in the border states? What would the effect of Murtha's proposal be? Where might troops be stationed "just over the horizon"?

Withdrawal may embolden our enemies short-term, but it would be an evanescent effect. Murtha's proposal's effect will be determined by the amount of sovereignty that the host country is perceived as retaining in its relationship with the US. That is, the less like a colonized puppet its government looks, the better its chance of evading extremist retaliation. Though several countries like Kuwait and Turkey might be attractive, it could be wiser to station a brigade of Marines in the Gulf as a very rapid reaction force, with reinforcing Army units farther away in Diego Garcia or somewhere less visible in the Arab political world.
5. What effect does continued deployment or withdrawal have on the ability of the United States to achieve broader foreign policy objectives and project its power abroad?

This is the key question. There's no question that the Iraq deployment is a major drain on the treasury, and that itself is a significant obstacle to accomplishing other foreign policy priorities. Despite arguements from war opponents, though, I think the foreign policy political capital could be salvaged if the US adopted a more pragmatic approach--describing the botched intelligence candidly and casting the current situation as a problem to fix rather than as a victory to achieve. Such a reframing will make the administration's tenor more in line with the view of the rest of the world, without substantively changing our goals and methods.

I agree that one of several US bases are likely, and that we have some sort of ongoing presence even after a substantial drawdown.

I admit that it makes sense to me that some argue for a complete withdrawal from Iraq, but I have no problem with our government planning to completely ignore such objections. Ultimately, the decision is properly between the US and Iraq.

All the 3rd parties who complained about Hussein but didn't want to actually get tangibly involved, and then later think they deserve opinions and to have their input heeded? Jam those views right back up the very same rectum you pulled 'em out of...