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Argument: The coalition can succeed in Iraq with more fine tunings of its strategy

Issue Report: Withdrawing from Iraq

Supporting quotes

[…]President Bush’s decision should therefore not be debated in terms of the “stay the course” strategy he has repeatedly disavowed in recent days. Rather, it should be seen as the first step toward a new grand strategy relating power to diplomacy for the entire region, ideally on a nonpartisan basis.
The purpose of the new strategy should be to demonstrate that the United States is determined to remain relevant to the outcome in the region; to adjust American military deployments and numbers to emerging realities; and to provide the maneuvering room for a major diplomatic effort to stabilize the Middle East.
Of the current security threats in Iraq — the intervention of outside countries, the presence of al-Qaeda fighters, an extraordinarily large criminal element, the sectarian conflict — the United States has a national interest in defeating the first two; it must not involve itself in the sectarian conflict for any extended period, much less let itself be used by one side for its sectarian goals.
The sectarian conflict confines the Iraqi government’s unchallenged writ to the sector of Baghdad defined as the Green Zone. In many areas the militias exceed the strength of the Iraqi national army. Appeals to the Iraqi government to undertake reconciliation and economic reforms are not implemented, partly because the will to do so is absent but essentially because it lacks the power to put such policies in place, even if the will to do so could suddenly be mobilized. If the influence of the militias could be eliminated — or greatly reduced — the Baghdad government would have a better opportunity to pursue a national policy.
The new strategy has begun with attempts to clear the insurrectional Sunni parts of Baghdad. But it must not turn into ethnic cleansing or the emergence of another tyrannical state, only with a different sectarian allegiance. Side by side with disarming the Sunni militias and death squads, the Baghdad government must show comparable” [read more his strategy here]
“Despite the Bush administration’s repeated declarations of its commitment to success in Iraq, the results of current policy there are not encouraging. After two years, Washington has made little progress in defeating the insurgency or providing security for Iraqis, even as it has overextended the U.S. Army and eroded support for the war among the American public. Although withdrawing now would be a mistake, simply ‘staying the course,’ by all current indications, will not improve matters either. Winning in Iraq will require a new approach.”