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CURRENT
ISSUE: January 22, 2007
VOL.
45, NO. 2Oakland,
CA
Bush’s plan for troop surge elicits
support, concern among Catholics
 |
| Crosses set on a hill in Lafayette recall U.S. service
men and women who have died in Iraq. The hill was the site of an evening
demonstration against the war on Jan. 11 attended by several hundred
people. Similar anti-war demonstrations were held in Washington, Boston
and New York after President George W. Bush announced that he would
increase U.S. troops in Iraq by 21,500. CNS PHOTO/GREG TARCZYNSKI |
WASHINGTON
(CNS) -- A Catholic Army chaplain who was stationed in Iraq and a Christian
Iraqi-American military adviser said they stand behind U.S. President
George W. Bush’s most recent plan to send more troops to Iraq.
But three international policy experts contacted by Catholic News Service
sharply criticized the plan and questioned whether it can succeed.
“If this is what the leaders are asking for, then that’s what
they need,” said Father Brian Kane, who served as an Army chaplain
for the 67th Area Support Group at Al Asad Airfield, in the Iraqi Al Anbar
region.
Father Kane said the White House’s goals for the Iraqi government
to ease sectarian violence and stabilize the country are “a positive
step” and a “healthy direction.”
The Iraqi government “needs to show the world that they are capable
of taking care of their own country,” he said.
Using such goals, about which Bush did not elaborate, will enable Americans
to evaluate the Iraqi government’s progress, and they also act as
“a reassurance to the U.S. people that we are preparing to turn
things over to the Iraqis,” he told CNS from Wahoo, Neb., where
he has been a teacher at St. John Neumann High School since he returned
from Iraq in September.
Father Kane said he believes “when a nation is at war it should
not be divided in its resolve to support the troops who are in harm’s
way.”
In his address to the nation Jan. 10, Bush made no specific mention of
penalties for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for promises not kept.
Bush said he plans to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq, but he set no
time limit for the deployment or for when he plans to totally withdraw
troops.
Pauline Jasim, a military bilingual and bicultural adviser in Baghdad,
Iraq, said it was “about time Washington realized the (number of)
troops were never enough, and more troops are needed in Baghdad.”
The Iraqis, particularly in Baghdad, “were ecstatic when more troops
were transferred to Baghdad last August; they had hoped Baghdad would
be cleaned up,” she told CNS in an e-mail Jan. 10.
However, Jasim said Iraq has “lost all hope in its government, coalition
forces and the world.”
“The secular and the educated population has fled. ... They have
become the most hopeless people in the world, stranded in the neighboring
countries,” she said.
Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen, editor of the national Catholic magazine
America and director of the U.S. bishops’ Office of International
Justice and Peace 1991-98, said the plan “seems to me too light
on the troops” to achieve the goal of sufficient security for a
transition to Iraqi control.
More importantly, “it ignores the diplomatic elements altogether,”
he said.
He said in Bosnia-Herzegovina the allied forces sent in one soldier for
every 50 civilians to establish security. Increasing U.S. forces in Iraq
from about 130,000 to 150,000 does not come close to the ratio needed,
he said, noting some have estimated it would take about 350,000 to 400,000
for an effective occupying force.
The expansion will come by extending current troops’ stays and sending
others back into Iraq early, he said, and “the military is being
stretched extraordinarily thin.”
He said the Bush plan ignores the Iraq Study Group’s call to look
at the situation in Iraq as a regional problem, and the administration
continues to try to isolate Iran and Syria, two major actors in the region,
instead of drawing them into diplomatic negotiations.
Maryann Cusimano Love, a professor of politics at The Catholic University
of America, Washington, and an expert on terrorism, said Jan. 11: “This
is primarily a political battle about winning hearts and minds. And the
military measures that he presented last night don’t do anything
to address the underlying problems in Iraq and, I’m afraid, are
unlikely to succeed.”
She called it a belated response to the problem that not enough troops
were committed in 2003.
“It’s four years too late,” she said. “I think
he recognizes now that there should have been more troops at the get-go,
but that doesn’t mean that more troops are the answer now.”
She said Bush’s claim that an additional 21,500 troops will provide
enough force to hold neighborhoods once they are cleared “is simply
factually incorrect. When you look at the size of the Iraqi population
and the size of the insurgency versus the size of U.S. troops, this just
doesn’t add up. We had a much more intensive commitment in Kosovo,
and that was a long, hard row.”
Gerard F. Powers, director of policy studies at the University of Notre
Dame’s Kroc Institute for Peace and head of the bishops’ Office
of International Justice and Peace 1998-2004, said there “are some
positive proposals” in the Bush plan and “the stated goal
is the right one -- a united, stable, nonsectarian government.”
But he said the “modest increase in troops” announced by Bush
is another case of “willing the ends but not the means.”
“We’re in a real hole” because the United States does
not have the troops needed to establish security for civilians in Iraq,
he said.
“It would only be feasible if the United States were able to convince
other nations, get the international community involved in a serious way.
And it’s probably too late for that,” he said.
