Coleman’s Report from Iraq: Bring Home 5,000 Troops by Christmas

This post replaces the one I hastily threw together at noon, immediately after hanging up from a 45-minute conference call between Sen. Norm Coleman and Minnesota reporters about his weekend trip to Iraq.

During the call, Coleman endorsed Sen. John Warner’s recent proposal to bring 5,000 U.S. troops home by Christmas. That gesture is designed to send a message to the Iraqi government that it needs to do more on the political front to reconcile Iraq’s ethnosectarian fighting.

Other than that, Coleman did not put any additional distance between his position on the war and that of the Bush administration. In fact, he retracted the one previous Iraq-related position on which he had broken with Bush. Last year, he had publicly opposed the major part of the “surge” strategy. Now he says he was mistaken. The surge is working.

more insideColeman strongly endorsed the current U.S. strategy in Iraq and the current military-diplomatic leadership team of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. He said the U.S. Congress, which will hear their report next week, will find them very credible. He called Petraeus “the best we’ve got” and raved about Crocker’s fluent Arabic and ability to connect with the locals.

Coleman met with Petraeus and Crocker and several Iraqi government officials and political leaders (although not with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.) The senator was very upbeat about the military progress being made.

Although he endorsed Warner’s (R-Va.) call for a small troop withdrawal, he described that as a symbolic gesture.  Otherwise, he still opposes deadlines for withdrawal. He expects U.S. troops to be in Iraq for a long time, but with a changed mission focused on fighting Al Qaida and containing Iranian influence. He called Iran “the great enemy” and “the enemy of stability.”

On the other hand, he expects a significant troop reduction in 2008, if only because the U.S. military is worn out and can’t sustain the current levels.

But (and it wasn’t clear how this squares with his position on the Warner idea) he said he would not “support, at this point, a politician’s decision” as to when troops can be withdrawn, particularly coming from those who have said “we’re gonna be out of Iraq” because “we’re gonna be in Iraq a long time… But with a changed mission.”

Presumably referring to some of the resolutions Democrats have sponsored to set target dates for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops, Coleman said those “resolutions are prescriptions for defeat. Those I’m not going to support. Politicians should not create arbitrary deadlines for withdrawal based on political winds.”

For those who want to hear Coleman’s full assessment in his own voice and who are curious how one of these calls goes, I’ll post the full audio as soon as I work through my tech issues. Till then, here’s a more detailed summary, long on quotes and paraphrases, short of analysis:

Coleman was in Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi. “What I saw and what I heard was as optimistic as I’ve heard in the four times I’ve been in Iraq.”

The last time he was in Iraq, it wasn’t safe to even visit Ramadi. This time, he went without a flak jacket or a helmet and chatted with the mayor, who was dreaming of the day when Ramadi would attract tourists. (Coleman noted, there is a lake nearby, which should help.) Violent incidents in Ramadi, which used to average 140 a day, are down to one a day.

The key is that the local population has turned against Al Qaida and Al Qaida is on the run. Coleman said he wouldn’t bog down on the question of whether Al Qaida was in Iraq before the United States invaded, but they are there now.

(Coleman, like Bush, did not make the distinction that media reports have begun making between the Al Qaida of Osama bin Laden fame, and the mostly Iraqi organization that calls itself Al Qaida in Iraq and that has an unclear relationship to bin Laden.)

Coleman said “The war against Al Qaida is being fought in Iraq. There is no question in Al Qaida’s mind.”
Foreign fighters came over, attempted to control cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah. And he said that Americans would support the war as long as they understood that the United States was fighting Al Qaida there.

“It’s a war we’re winning,” Coleman said, adding that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is “wrong to say the war is lost.”

Coleman tempered his optimistic assessment by acknowledging that “the last four years have been riddled with bad predictions and broken promises on Iraq. I understand that.”

He spoke in moderately harsh terms about the  Iraqi government, which he said “hasn’t provided enough leadership,” and “has been disappointing, to say the least,” and “needs to take more aggressive action.” The lack of stronger measures by Maliki’s government to create national reconciliation “threatens to undermine the security gains” accomplished by U.S. troops. He said the Shia  “don’t understand that they’ve won the war” and are having trouble looking past the Sunni-Shia divide. He said Americans “don’t want to be sacrificing blood and more treasure to referee a civil war.”

But he contradicted that, to some extent, by saying that the trouble in Iraq has shifted from a Sunni-Shiite civil war to a war largely being fought for power and control between the rival Shiite factions led by Moqtada al Sadr and his militia, which Coleman said is being supported by Iran, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, led by the al-Hakim family.

Coleman said he is for two things:

1.  Warner’s 5,000-troops-home-by-Christmas idea, which he hopes will “send an unmistakable message to the Shia leadership…that there is no blank check.” Coleman emphasized that a withdrawal that small would not make any difference militarily. If I had had a chance to ask another question, I would have asked how such a token gesture, which is apparently not backed by a threat of even bigger withdrawals if the Iraqis fail to pass the bills that Washington is demanding, will send such a clear message.

2. A “diplomatic surge” in the region, asking the large (Egypt), and wealthy (Saudi Arabia) Sunni countries to recognize that they have an interest in containing Iran’s influence and to get involved in economic development projects in the Sunni areas of Iraq.

Coleman, who acknowledged that he has been a critic of the United Nations, also called for the U.N. to play a bigger more constructive role in Iraq.

It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit when Coleman was in Ramadi, he said. To those who say “it’s a dry heat,” he replied: “My oven is a dry heat.”

Full Audio Here