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More troops to Iraq? Six questions Pentagon needs to answer first.

Here are six of the big questions the Pentagon is grappling with, even as calls for more troops to the region continue.

5. Will more troops undermine US message to Iraq when it left the first time?

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/File
President Obama salutes during a ceremony for the return of the United States Forces-Iraq Colors at Joint Base Andrews marking the end of the war in Iraq, Dec. 20, 2011.

  • By Anna Mulrine Staff writer

This message, specifically, involved telling Iraqi officials and military leaders that they had better learn everything they could from US trainers, because the US was leaving in December 2011.

“As the Iraqis stand up, the US can stand down,” was the oft-repeated credo of US commanders in the region in the run-up to the US military’s 2011 departure.

Now that the US is back in Iraq again, does this mean that other international partners will expect the US to come back and rescue them whenever they need it, which in turn might be a disincentive to absorbing the skills that US troops are trying to impart whenever the Pentagon decides to take on a training mission elsewhere in the world?

“I think this is a challenge that is a tradeoff between giving partner forces enough support that you’re going to be there for them, but not creating a dependency on the US,” Scharre says. “That’s what we’ve been grappling with for a decade-plus in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The tricky part is figuring out what behavior that a hard cutoff date, for example, may inadvertently incentivize, he adds.

“If you tell partners, ‘Listen, we’re leaving so you guys have got to figure this out,’ for them ‘figuring this out’ may not mean ‘coming together to solve sectarian disputes,’ ” Scharre says. “It may mean ‘arm yourselves for the coming civil war.’ This may be in their best interest – but it’s not in our best interest.”

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Mark Sappenfield
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