If Someone Like Edwards is Elected President, Will U.S. Military Be Able to Pull Troops and Equipment Out in First Year of New Administration?

Democrat John Edwards has promised to pull the U.S. military completely out of Iraq in the first year of his Presidency as part of his campaign platform. A question: if an anti-war candidate like Edwards is elected in November, can the military fulfill that wish in one year, assuming that the current administration keeps troop levels around 130,000?

The answer is: probably not. It's simple physics and logistics. The military brass say that they can move one combat brigade out of Iraq per month. There are between nineteen and twenty combat and support brigades and their equipment currently deployed. That's a minimum of twenty months, if all the ships and transport aircraft stay available and don't have maintenance issues.

The military pace is more realistic than the political pace.

The only way that a promise like Edwards' can be fulfilled is if President Bush starts withdrawing troops on a large scale in 2008, which is doubtful.

Edwards and the others shouldn't make promises that they can't keep. A more realistic promise is to withdraw troops by the end of their first term. The politicians are really going to mess things up if they have their way.

Democrats on Verge of Breaking Promise Not to Cut Funding to Troops in Iraq

The Democrats in Congress are on the verge of breaking their promise not to defund the troops in Iraq. This is hardly a surprise given many ran on anti-war platforms. And their defeatist Republican lap-dog colleagues are too weak and ineffectual to disagree with them. I believe de-funding was always inevitable--it's what the Democratic majority wanted all along.

But still, to cut off reinforcements and bullets and equipment to the soldiers who are over there now is irresponsible. And Congress will be unable to keep dodging their collective responsibility in authorizing the war in the first place. Their votes gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq, whether his intel was good or not.

They keep saying they are a co-equal branch of government, yet they clearly don't want to take their share of the blame. They're co-equal all right, but only to a point.

The military needs to complete their mission and soon. We have bigger fish to fry and Iraq is taking up too much time, attention and resources. Blindly cutting their funding to bring them home in six months without a measure of success will only make the situation worse, not better.

All that will happen is the next President will have the unenviable task of sending troops back in once terror groups use Iraq the same way they used Afghanistan to attack New York and Washington. And Congress will blame Bush for that too, for stopping the war too soon.

And this will be after Congress and the next Administration decide to slash military rebuilding funds, too.

What a vicious cycle we find ourselves facing.