Part of the deal with the new CAP gig is that I’ll actually show up to the office and work from a proper desk. One major side-benefit of that is that it’s now super-convenient to walk down the hallway and show up at CAP events. Right now, for example, I’m sitting at an event for the release of a new report by Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, Peter Juul on “How to Redeploy: Implementing a Responsible Drawdown of U.S. Forces from Iraq”. Korb is speaking right now and making the point that the alleged logistical impediments to a reasonably speedy withdrawal from Iraq tend to be wildly overstated. If you want to make it logistically impossible to withdraw in a timely manner you can define the problem in such a way as to make it impossible — carefully dismantling each and every thing we’ve ever built, withdrawing every last piece of equipment — but if you want to leave, it’s more than possible to organize a responsible exit strategy.
Colonels T.X. Hammes and Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, two of the most celebrated counterinsurgency thinkers out there, are on hand to talk about the matter. Hammes disagrees, I think, with the strategy behind the timeline but agrees that the logistical argument against withdrawal is bunk. Read the whole report here or just click here
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