U.S. to Hand Over Nine Army Posts to S. Korea, Including Sears, Edwards, and Essayons

The U.S. and ROK governments have agreed on the handover of nine more U.S. bases, further reducing our footprint in South Korea. 

The process was concluded Thursday as a joint committee under the South Korea-United States status of forces agreement (SOFA) approved and signed the agreement on the relocation of the bases, the ministry said.
….

The relocation of the bases are part of a long-term, multi-billion dollar project to realign and move the U.S. forces in South Korea further south to the rear of the inter-Korean border.

The bases to be relocated include Camp Edwards in Paju, just north of Seoul, Camp Sears and Camp Essayons, both also just north of the South Korean capital, according to the ministry.  [Yonhap]

The central government and the various local governments will now consult on what to do with this new land.  Naturally, as this involves the United States in some fashion, the usual suspects are whining that the United States didn’t bear enough of the cost of relocation and cleanup.

If you’re tired of listening to me talk about Iraq, you can quit now.

*   There has  been  a very curious  derailment of an Iranian train in Turkey, and hostage-taking is back as an instrument of foreign policy.  [Strategy Page]

*   It must have hurt the AP to have to report  on the spreading Sunni “uprising” against al-Qaeda (a term chosen, I suspect, to  exaggerate AQI’s control.)  The Washington Post’s story leaves you wondering just who is fighting who, although I’m content to read about all the work they’re saving us by racking up impressive fatality counts against each other with suicide bombs and IED’s.   Given the  necessary extremes we’ve  gone to to spare mosques, it’s also amusing to see how shamelessly AQI and the Sunni thugs target them,  how invariably the leaders of the various gangs are found, and killed, while sheltering there.  I have to wonder whether  the surge driven some  of these thugs  into the turf of the other thugs, thus forcing them to fight over less territory and more scarce resources.

In West Baghdad, the Americans appear to be mostly eating popcorn and watching with rapt attention, although the Salvation Councils, according to one report, have joined the fight.  [HT: Bill Roggio]   Overall, of course, we had a bloody month, but the sense of loss is tempered by very real signs of progress.  As you can see from this example, there isn’t much we can do without help from the local population, and not much in the long we can’t do with it (except, of course, keeping the country together — more on that later).

Either the native Sunni insurgents are either getting help from anti-AQI locals, or they  are essentially indistinguishable from them.   This development is now sustained and significant enough to have a deep significance:  in many or  most of the areas of Iraq where it  operated at the end of last year,  AQI seems to have so little popular support left that it can hardly  be fairly termed a guerrilla force.  Not so of the  native Sunni insurgency, which probably has substantial support in some quarters, but which seems to be realizing that the  fighting is only harming its long-term interests, radicalizing the Shiites who outnumber them, and expanding Iran’s influence.  There’s a chance they can be reconciled, and if so, that’s the ideal outcome for making Iraq an exception to the morass that every other nation in the region is today.  We’ve learned that that such places breed terror, so we do have a long-term interest in making Iraq an exception, but  that will only work if the Iraqis themselves invest in making theirs a civil society.  At best, this will continue to be a difficult path, but  Iraqis have the advantage — as well as the disadvantage —  of having lived with or been to the brink of the alternatives. 

Even if not, however, we’ll have met our two most important short-term security goals if we manage to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime and deny AQI  the ability to operate in Iraq, the access to its resources, and the immense psychological boost of defeating us with our own Congress.  Those goals are non-negotiable.  After that, if Iraqis decide that  they simply can’t live with each other, that’s a choice we can’t stop them from making.  If so, we can  seek other ways of mitigating the slaughter, containing the chaos,  and dealing with Iran.