Bush sees South Korea model for Iraq

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent 24 minutes ago

President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.

The comparison was offered as the Pentagon announced the completion of the troop buildup ordered by Bush in January. The last of about 21,500 combat troops to arrive were an Army brigade in Baghdad and a Marine unit heading into the Anbar province in western Iraq.

Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there are now 20 combat brigades in Iraq, up from 15 when the buildup began. A brigade is roughly 3,500 troops. Overall, the Pentagon said there are 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. That number may still climb as more support troops move in.

The administration warns that the buildup will result in more U.S. casualties as more American soldiers come into contact with enemy forces. May already is the third bloodiest month since the war began in March 2003. As of late Tuesday, there were 116 U.S. deaths in Iraq so far in May — trailing only the 137 in November 2004 and the 135 in April 2004. Overall, more than 3,460 U.S. service members have died.

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Bush has cited the long-term Korea analogy in looking at the U.S. role in Iraq, where American forces are in the fifth year of an unpopular war. Bush's goal is for Iraqi forces to take over the chief security responsibilities, relieving U.S. forces of frontline combat duty, Snow said.

"I think the point he's trying to make is that the situation in Iraq, and indeed, the larger war on terror, are things that are going to take a long time," Snow said. "But it is not always going to require an up-front combat presence."

Instead, he said, U.S. troops would provide "the so-called over-the-horizon support that is necessary from time to time to come to the assistance of the Iraqis. But you do not want the United States forever in the front."

The comparison with South Korea paints a picture of a lengthy U.S. commitment at a time when Americans have grown weary of the Iraq war and want U.S. troops to start coming home. Bush vetoed legislation that would set timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals, and forced Congress to approve a new bill stripped of troop pullout language.

Asked if U.S. forces would be permanently stationed in Iraq, Snow said, "No, not necessarily." He said that the prospect of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq were "not necessarily the case, either."

Later, Snow said it was impossible to say if U.S. troops would remain in Iraq for some 50 years, as they have in South Korea. "I don't know," he said. "It is an unanswerable question. But I'm not making that suggestion. ... The war on terror is a long war."

South Korea is just one example of U.S. troops stationed more than a half-century after war. Germany and Japan are two other examples. American forces are deployed in roughly 130 countries around the world, performing a variety of duties from combat to peacekeeping to training foreign militaries, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-oriented think tank.

In South Korea, about 29,500 U.S. troops are stationed as a deterrent against the communist North, but that number is to decline to 24,500 by 2008 as part of the Pentagon's worldwide realignment of its forces. The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, seemed a surprising choice when he got the job earlier this year, yet his experience as U.S. commander in the Pacific overseeing the Korean peninsula would serve him well if the U.S. military adopts a Korea model in Iraq.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070531/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq

What model? This guy is disillusioned, there was an armistice between Communist North and the UN backed South. how the fu-k are these 2 similar?

Is it really surprising that Bush has no understanding of history?

The comparison of the occupation/rebuilding of post-WWII Japan and Germany with Iraq was another "brilliant" comparison.

Haha... What a joke...

The huge difference is that South Koreans were overwhelmingly supportive of the U.S., who saved South Korea from the communist invasion. On the other hand, while the U.S. did save Iraq from Saddam's tyranny, the people there don't seem to appreciate it, and rather see the U.S. with much resentment. That's the huge difference. It's up to the Iraqis, including the "resistance", whether or not they'll develop a constructive relationship with the U.S. as Korea did and use the opportunity to become an advanced nation. SK-like Iraq in the Middle East would have benefitial synergic effects to the region, the Middle East.

Let him shoot himself in the foot

1)Two totally different countries
2)Two totally different wars
3)Two totally different historical circumstances (regarding why the U.S. went to war in the respective countries)
4)Two totally different native populations (South Korea wanted U.S. troops...Iraq wants nothing to do with them)


It's funny that Bush would even suggest such a permanent residence for the American miliary in Iraq, modeled after South Korea....
Just another sign of his intelligence (lack thereof) and ignorance....

There could be a lot of parallels but you guys fail to see it. I don't think anyone is saying Iraq and SK are similar situations but they are talking about a case where the US sets up a military and supports them while maintaining a presence in the country through a limited number of bases. What's so hard to understand about that?

Sometimes you people make yourselves sound stupid because you are so anxious to bash the US government or Bush.

the difference is iraq doesn't want america around and george bush's admin is really incompetent. it'd be like hiring a blind surgeon... no thanks.

Iraq Is Korea? Bush's latest appalling historical analogy.

http://www.slate.com/id/2167362/

Bush's Korea specter in Iraq
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - While US President George W Bush appears, however belatedly, to be embracing recommendations by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to begin withdrawing US combat troops by early next year, he has implicitly rejected the ISG's call to renounce any intention to establish permanent military bases in Iraq.

Indeed, confirmation by his spokesman, Tony Snow, last week that Bush favors a "Korean model" for Iraq where Washington would provide "a security presence" and serve as a "force of



stability [for] a long time" spurred new questions about the administration's aims in Iraq and whether they indeed included a permanent military presence.

Adding to the speculation were remarks last Thursday by both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the overall field commander of US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, suggesting that Washington favors a protracted, if not permanent, troop presence similar to the one that has seen a minimum of 30,000 US soldiers deployed to bases in South Korea since the Korean War more than 50 years ago.

"I think it's a great idea," Odierno told reporters during a video conference from Baghdad when asked about the South Korea analogy.

"That would be nothing but helping the Iraqi security forces and the government to continue to stabilize itself, and continue to set itself up for success for years to come, if we were able to do that," he said.

Meanwhile, Gates offered during a visit to Hawaii that the presence of "some force of Americans ... for a protracted period of time" would help reassure US allies in the region that Washington would not abandon them.

The Korea analogy has spurred some consternation among analysts in Washington for a variety of reasons, not least because when Iraqis have been surveyed on their views about permanent US military bases in their country, the response - except among the minority Kurdish population - has been overwhelmingly negative.

"It's unhelpful to handling the politics of our presence in Iraq," Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who has been sympathetic to the Bush administration's goals in Iraq, told the Los Angeles Times last week.

But experts also reject the notion that the situation in Iraq, where US forces find themselves in the middle of a number of internal sectarian conflicts, bears any relation to that of South Korea, where US troops have been deployed as a "trip-wire" along the Demilitarized Zone to deter North Korean forces for more than 50 years.

The analogy "is either a gross oversimplification to try to reassure people [the Bush administration] has a long-term plan, or it's just silly", said retired Lieutenant-General Donald Kerrick, a former US deputy national security adviser who served two tours of duty in South Korea.

In recommending that Bush explicitly renounce a permanent military presence in Iraq last December, the 10-member ISG, which was co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, argued that such a declaration would reassure two key constituencies.

"The United States can begin to shape a positive climate for its diplomatic efforts [in stabilizing Iraq], internationally and within Iraq, through public statements by President Bush that reject the notion that the United States seeks to control Iraq's oil, or seeks permanent military bases within Iraq," it said, urging Bush to "state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases" there.

Congress has also implicitly encouraged the administration to make such a commitment. In the past two years, it has passed two laws that prohibit the government from spending any money to establish a permanent US military presence in Iraq.

Yet as the latest statements suggest, Bush has ignored these calls, while the Pentagon, which has been turning over smaller military bases to Iraqi forces in a number of provinces in the past year, has built up and retained four "super-bases" around the country capable of housing tens of thousands of military personnel.

In congressional testimony early last year, the then-chief of the US Central Command, General John Abizaid, laid out a number of reasons Washington would want to retain at least permanent access to those bases, although he stressed at the time that a policy on long-term US presence in Iraq had not been formulated.

In particular, he cited the "need to be able to deter ambitions of an expansionistic Iran", ensure the "free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our nation and everybody else in the world depend", and carry out counter-terrorist operations.

"No doubt there is a need for some presence in the region over time primarily to help people to help themselves through this period of extremists versus moderates," he said in remarks that gained little attention at the time.

Despite the rapid descent into sectarian civil war in Iraq, as well as the plunge in public support in the US for the war that was made clear by the Democratic landslide in congressional elections last November and the publication of the ISG's recommendations, since Abizaid's testimony, the administration does not appear to have reconsidered its position.

"Of course, our original plans called for 13 permanent military bases, and the grand scheme was to deploy large numbers of troops there to exercise military hegemony over the Middle East," said retired Lieutenant-General John Johns in a teleconference arranged last Friday by the National Security Network. "That still is in the back of the mind of President Bush and some of his advisers.

"I can't take seriously that they would compare the Korea situation with Iraq," he noted, adding, "What bothers me is that it's an umbrella for staying the course."

Given prevailing popular sentiment in Iraq, maintaining a permanent military presence there could also undermine Washington's ostensible goal to promote democracy there, according to Charles Smith, an expert on the Persian Gulf region at the University of Arizona.

"This model requires the approval and cooperation of an Iraqi government, the gaining of which is highly doubtful. So if the US wants official approval, it will have to place its own man in power and keep there by force," he said. "In that case, the model to refer to is South Vietnam in the early 1960s, and we all know what happened there."

At least one Korea specialist said there are indeed parallels between the two situations, but only in a negative sense.

"Korea and Iraq are both examples of Americans stumbling into an unknown political, social and civilizational thicket, thinking they will solve some problem quickly, only to find that they cannot get out - ever, apparently," said University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings, who stressed that Washington first became militarily involved in Korea immediately after Japan's defeat in World War II to prevent guerrillas led by North Korean founder Kim Il-sung from taking over the South.

"Then the Pentagon perpetual-motion machine takes over, and we have a new set of military bases to go with the roughly 735 [others] that we have around the world," he said.

Another prominent Northeast Asia specialist at the University of California at San Diego, Chalmers Johnson, described the analogy as potentially "disastrous".

"The Koreans have not asked us to stay there for the past 50 years. It's become one of the most anti-American countries that we've been allied with for some time now, in large part due to the bases we have there," said Johnson, who has published several books on Washington's global military deployment, including The Sorrows of Empire.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/middle_east/if05ak02.html

Zaytun s*ks.

Still US isn't anymore what was 100 years ago that valued Christian values.