WASHINGTON: In their debate on Wednesday night in Hanover, NH, none of the three top Democratic presidential candidates would promise to have the US military out of Iraq by January 2013 — more than five years from now.

“I think it would be irresponsible” to state that, said Senator Barack Obama, of Illinois.

“I cannot make that commitment,” added former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

And Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York put it simply when she outlined the dilemma that Democratic presidential aspirants face on Iraq. “It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,” the party’s front-runner said.

After President Bush’s announcement this month of a limited troop drawdown and continuation of the “surge” strategy through next summer, the key question for centrist Democrats in the presidential race is no longer whether US forces will remain in Iraq but what size, mission and length a post-surge, post-Bush force would take on. Even if the Democratic hopefuls decline to offer specifics, some of the people touted as possible defense secretaries under a Democratic White House offer a vision of a US presence in Iraq that does not differ markedly from that of the Bush administration.

“There’s a fairly narrow band of choice here, a relatively limited set of options,” said David Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency expert who has advised General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq. “I think a Democratic or Republican administration will be doing fairly similar things.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recently that he hopes to bring the US presence in Iraq down to about 100,000 troops by the end of 2008, eventually falling to a long-term presence of roughly 40,000 to 60,000 troops, whose job would be mainly to back up Iraqi forces.

John Hamre, a Clinton-era Pentagon official mentioned as a possible successor to Gates in a Democratic administration, said in an e-mail that when a new president takes over in January 2009, the US mission will include “force protection, overwatch (of Iraqi security operations), continued training/mentoring of Iraqi security forces and direct action operations against known bad guys.” There is likely to be some patrolling by US forces in Baghdad,” Hamre noted, “but it should be considerably reduced.”

At that point, said Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary also on the Democratic short list for defense secretary, the next president should talk to Iraqi officials about setting a target date to leave Iraq but make it clear that the date is negotiable, depending on the political progress Iraqis make. Bush has fiercely resisted setting such a timetable. Danzig, an adviser on defense issues for Obama, emphasized that he was speaking for himself.

A third possibility for defense secretary, Senator Jack Reed, D-R.I., a former officer in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, said he agreed with the Democratic candidates that “the reality is that there is a likelihood of an American presence” in Iraq in 2013 but said he hoped it would be a small, non-combat force. As for the mission under a new administration, Reed said the US military will not have enough soldiers in Iraq to continue the current effort to protect the population and will have to focus on training, counterterrorism and perhaps border security missions.

The first clue to determining how many US soldiers will be in Iraq in 2009 — and what they will be doing — will come in the spring. As the “surge” ends and US forces begin to draw down, the United States will assess whether Iraqi forces are able to take over providing security. The US strategy of “clear, hold and build” depends on Iraqi troops and police ultimately being able to “hold.” But there has been little evidence so far of their ability to do so in areas that are being contested, analysts note, especially in and around Baghdad.

“Recent US government estimates state that the Iraqi security forces will not be capable of taking on this mission for at least 18 to 24 months,” said Nora Bensahel, a security analyst at Rand Corp., “and I think there are reasons to be skeptical about this forecast, since that’s the same time frame that US government estimates included in both 2005 and 2006.”

The second unknown is whether the US standoff with Iran escalates, or other regional problems emerge that knock the US effort in Iraq off track. “Wild cards that could alter the present trajectory include escalating tensions with Iran and/or Syria, as well as the physical or political meltdown of the Iraqi government in Baghdad,” said Patrick Cronin, director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London.

Finally, the third factor is the outcome of the US presidential election in November 2008, with the vote likely to be shaped in part by how the United States stands in Iraq.

After years of worrying about “mission creep” — that is, the expansion of its tasks — the US military will have to adjust to a shrinking mission. The ambitious goals that the Bush administration set forth in 2003 of turning Iraq into a beacon of democracy for the Middle East have been set aside, replaced by the more limited aim of a stable Iraq that doesn’t fall apart, doesn’t engage in a full-blown civil war, and doesn’t spill over into a regional strife.

As the force is cut, said Kilcullen, the US mission will have to change to training, advising, supplying and backing up Iraq forces. The hardest part of this transition for US officials will be giving up control of operations, he predicted: Once the United States sets broad parameters, it will have to defer to Iraqi officials on issues such as timetables and nature of operations carried out.

But if the mission is narrowed too much or too fast, then the US position in Iraq could deteriorate rapidly, some military experts argue. In this view, the US military only recently has begun to get the strategy right, by moving troops off big bases and into the population.

If the United States “reduces troop strength” and “withdraws from living with the population,” worried retired Army Col. Howard Clark, a veteran policy planner, it would be quite possible to have a full-blown civil war emerge, with Sunnis fighting Shias and the Kurds combating Turkish forces in the north. Ultimately, however, it appears now that no matter who inhabits the White House, the United States may be resolved — or resigned — to an enduring presence in Iraq. “America has taken a deep breath,” Kilcullen said, “looked into the abyss of pulling out, and decided, ‘Let’s not do it yet.’” —Dawn-LAT/WP News Service (c) The Washington Post