The bipartisan Iraq Study Group is releasing its report today so I thought it would be timely to issue my study group report. Technically, my study group is not a group because I’m the only member. Neither is it bipartisan; it represents only my viewpoint. Neither did it cost a million dollars; it only cost some of my time. Here is my executive summary: We need to kick some ass!

I’ve said before that we should not have occupied Iraq — that we should have severely punished and removed the Saddam Hussein regime and then left the Iraqis to decide their own fate. We should not have settled in there as father figures for a people with conflicting cultures, none of which we understand. We should not have felt obligated to protect these people from themselves. But we did do these things and appear to be failing. So what should we do or not do now?

We most certainly should not ask Iran and Syria for help. We should tell them to stay out of the way or else. Expecting them to actually help at this point has to be the dumbest idea since the idea that we could mold Iraq into a country like our own. Any promise of support on their part would come at an unacceptable cost to us.

We most certainly should not be talking about a ‘graceful exit.’ Tim Russert, on the Don Imus show this morning, brought up the possibility that even a withdrawal at this point might result in a debacle similar to our departure from Vietnam, where we would be forced to leave most of our military equipment behind to prevent significant loss of military personnel. It could happen, of course, if we continue to insist on ‘playing nice.’ It won’t happen though if we make a dramatic exit, and that is what I think we should do.

A dramatic exit will do two things. It will get us out of Iraq and it will send a message to the terrorists and neighboring countries, especially Iran and Syria. That message will be: If you think we are leaving Iraq because we are militarily weak or because we don’t have the will to fight, then you could be dead wrong.

How do we make a dramatic exit? First we quietly prepare for the operation much the same way we prepared for the invasion. We build up our battle groups in the Persian Gulf; we position and strengthen our land based forces; and we position our heavy bombers, fighters and reconnaissance aircraft to support the operation. Then, when that is complete, we start talking openly about a complete withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. At the same time we start pulling our troops and equipment in Iraq into a few centralized locations that are easier to defend and arm them up for battle. If this encourages the insurgents, terrorists and neighboring countries to make concerted or independent plans to inflict major damage on us during the withdrawal, more the better. This is where the drama (shock and awe?) comes in.

In order to attack us they will have to form up and move into the open. This will give us what the military calls a target rich environment. As the targets appear we will attack them with the full force of all the airpower we have available. We will also attack them on the ground using the ‘withdrawing’ forces.

From the beginning of this process we watch the Iraq borders closely. If any country makes a move across the border we attack their forces viciously — even Saudi Arabia, that has said it might enter Iraq to protect the Sunnis if we withdraw. After the withdrawal is complete we could keep some forces in Kuwait and the Gulf for awhile in case some additional blows need to be dealt to those that doubt our will and might.

If the potential attackers are smarter than I think they are and don’t choose to take us on during the withdrawal process, then apparently they don’t disrespect us after all.

(I’ve written several posts on the Iraq war. You can review them all here. The best way to view all posts on a given subject is to scroll to the Categories box in a sidebar on this page and then click on that subject (category). This will cause all the posts to be displayed on one page in inverse chronological order.)