US government hints at bringing troops home from Iraq

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, while acknowledging the progress made in Iraq security-wise, has tentatively provided a time frame for the withdrawal of American troops stationed on Iraqi soil. Many would say that Secretary Gates has offered the American citizens an early Christmas gift but some would see this as a perfect election campaigning material just before the US presidential elections. Whatever may be the case there is still a lot of work to be done in the war-ravaged country before any final troop withdrawal and this is the fact White House knows very well. One cannot afford to be over optimistic with the decrease in violence in Iraq due to a surge in US troops earlier this year. The country is still being devastated by deep sectarian killings with US and Iraqi forces uncovering mass graves and torture chambers on a regular basis. A large portion of the American public thinks that US policy on Iraq is an absolute failure since the war started in early 2003. Perhaps the President Bush led government thinks that patience among the public is running out and no president, Republican or Democrat, is expected to be a successful or popular leader after the elections with American soldiers present inside Iraq. Furthermore, with such a weak Iraqi government in place, it is highly unlikely that the country would be in complete peace after any US withdrawal. At the current moment, with so much hatred existing among Iraq’s various ethnic groups, very few people are optimistic about Iraq’s future as a single democratic country. The current government is Shia-led with a coalition of Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs and these groups hardly agree in any reconciliation process, let alone a united Iraq. With so many American and Iraqi lives lost over the past five years, there is still no sign of normalcy and how can Defense Secretary Gates is able to provide a time table for withdrawal. According to many experts, if America is to leave from Iraq in a year’s time with no concrete local security and economic infrastructure in place, the country would be a heaven for Islamic extremism which would then spread like virus to other stable Middle Eastern states like Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, etc. Then the region would be hard to tackle for the Americans and President Bush might regret his decision to invade Iraq in the first place, let alone moving out troops from the country. Source: Yahoo!