What should we be doing in Iraq? Create a timetable for bringing our troops home? Stick around until we secure the region and lock down terrorist threats? The issue’s been on the backburner of American politics the last couple weeks, but it probably won’t stay there long.

Former General and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (it sounds like something from Star Wars, yeah?) Wesley Clark has a solid, rational proposal from the military perspective (unfortunately something we’re not seeing a lot of in politically-charged Washington):

Wesley Clark’s NY Times Editorial (12/6/05):

We need to keep our troops in Iraq, but we need to modify the strategy far more drastically than anything President Bush called for last week.

On the military side, American and Iraqi forces must take greater control of the country’s borders, not only on the Syrian side but also in the east, on the Iranian side. The current strategy of clearing areas near Syria of insurgents and then posting Iraqi troops, backed up by mobile American units, has had success. But it needs to be expanded, especially in the heavily Shiite regions in the southeast, where there has been continuing cross-border traffic from Iran and where the loyalties of the Iraqi troops will be especially tested.

We need to deploy three or four American brigades, some 20,000 troops, with adequate aerial reconnaissance, to provide training, supervision and backup along Iraq’s several thousand miles of vulnerable border. And even then, the borders won’t be “sealed”; they’ll just be more challenging to penetrate.

We must also continue military efforts against insurgent strongholds and bases in the Sunni areas, in conjunction with Iraqi forces. Over the next year or so, this will probably require four to six brigade combat teams, plus an operational reserve, maybe 30,000 troops.

But these efforts must go hand-in-glove with intensified outreach to Iraqi insurgents, to seek their reassimilation into society and their assistance in wiping out residual foreign jihadists. Iraqi and American officials have had sporadic communications with insurgent leaders, but these must lead to deeper discussions on issues like amnesty for insurgents who lay down their arms and opportunities for their further participation in public and private life.

But then again, our friend Johnny Cougar has a point:

We all know what we are losing in the Iraq war. We are losing our precious soldiers. With 2,200+ dead, 16,000+ wounded, and countless others coming back with mental disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we are losing a good segment of our young men, and the sanity of their families.

We lost our credibility as a nation. The lies that brought us into war have shot down the “America is a great peacemaking nation” image that was so valuable to us. Muslims nations, who before the war, didn’t necessarily hate America a whole lot, now disapprove of America almost totally.

We lost the faith of the Iraqi people. Now, 80% of the population considers us “occupiers” and less than a handful call us “liberators”. Forty-five percent or more think it is okay to attack US troops.

And of course, the national treasury has lost billions of dollars regarding this war. In fact, some estimates say that, including the lifelong healthcare costs of brain-damaged soldiers, money lost in the economy due to deaths in Iraq, and all other costs combined could add up to over $1 trillion.