About this whole "withdrawing" from Iraq by "redeploying" idea

Helana Cobban in the Jan/Feb 2006 Boston Review, responding to the lead article by Barry Posen, writes:

Since mid-November, it has become increasingly clear that the Bush administration has indeed decided to adopt a "troop drawdown plus (largely) off-shore balancing" policy similar to that advocated by Posen. But this policy is already doomed to failure. As in the case of Israel's lengthy pursuit post-1985 of a "small force inside plus threat of massive strikes from outside" policy in Lebanon, if the United States tries to pursue this kind of policy in Iraq it will continue to find itself facing powerful opposing forces there; and it will eventually - after how many more American and Iraqi deaths? - conclude that a complete or near-complete withdrawal from the country is the only viable path. ...

For my part, I do not define the U.S. national interest in terms of a hegemonic (or even simply "balancing") U.S. military presence in the gulf region. The best interests of Americans will be served if we and our leaders build a relationship of equality, nonviolence, and cooperation with the 96 percent of the world's people who are not Americans. We need an end to Bush-style unilateralism - which I read Posen as seeking to perpetuate, both in Iraq and in the Gulf. It needs to be replaced with a renewed commitment to multilateral, UN-based action to confront the challenges posed by the political and geopolitical shifts that are already underway in Iraq and the rest of the Gulf region. The Bush administration has done a huge amount to shred the capabilities of the international body (which also has its own pressing internal problems). But the kind of rules-based international mediation that the UN alone can provide may well be the only factor capable of helping extricate the United States from George Bush’s disastrous imbroglio in Iraq. Posen's misnamed "disengagement" offers no such promise.

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