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Troop increase? Hardly
The headlines were sensational &emdash; "Howard sends more troops to Iraq" &emdash; but the truth more mundane. Howard has decided to send 70 military trainers to Iraq to help train Iraqi troops. Training Iraqi troops is in principle a good thing because it means they ought to be better positioned to take care of their own security. On the other hand, the CoWs have been in Iraq for almost four years now &emdash; in that time the Iraqi troops could have undertaken a university degree including an honours thesis. If more training were going to help, this raises the question of why there has not been ample opportunity to provide such training already.
The chorus of calls for withdrawal from Iraq is understandable &emdash; four years without even a sign of progress towards stability makes it seem like an impossible task. To some extent that is because imposing stability by force is an impossible task unless you engage in totalitarian tactics. Stable democracies rarely emerge because an outside power overthrows a tyrant &emdash; stable democracies normally arise either because the citizens of a nation are from a culture that already holds democratic values or because they have fought for democracy. Iraqi culture has never been imbued with strong democratic values and has never stood together to fight for democracy. Arguably a withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq is a prerequisite to a functioning democracy &emdash; it would give the Iraqis a chance to fight for democracy under their own steam, and if they succeed in doing so they are more likely to have a lasting democracy than if the insurgencies were defeated by foreign troops.
I have previously said a deadline needs to be set, but if we withdraw we do owe it to Iraq, having blundered in and made such a mess of things, to equip them as best we can to win that fight for democracy. If the Iraqi troops have not been adequately trained for the task due to some planning bungle since the invasion, then it is not only appropriate to boost their training - it is an obligation.