Let me start by stating that I’ve never come out in support of a US withdrawal from Iraq. What I support is drafting all Republicans of military age. Having said that…
Apparently, the argument against setting a timetable is that the bad guys will simply lie low until that date has passed, then take over. The flip side being that if the US maintains that we will stay indefinitely, the bad guys will think that the only way to get rid of us will be to stand and fight. And in that case, over the next 2 or 3 years we will–of course–annihilate them and there will be no one left in Iraq willing to engage in political violence.
But is this really a realistic scenario given all the various factions with their shifting loyalties, rivalries, and religious sensitivities? There’s always going to be plenty of hatred of the US in that part of the world, and there’s also the influence of Iran. All this doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that our troops and their allies will soon be the only ones left alive in the Middle East–if only we continue to stay the course,
One problem with that argument is, the “bad guys” ( which is a bad way to phrase it, since WE are bad guys ) live there. We can wait a year or a century; they’ll be there.
That would mean killing the entire Iraqi population. The people who want to kill us, have perfectly rational reasons for murderously hating us. And the more we kill, the more reasons they have. They may have other, selfish or irrational motives as well; but the bottom line is that they hate us because we deserve to be hated. We aren’t talking about a few fanatics. We are talking about an entire population that SHOULD want us dead. The most we can do that way is focus all of the violence on us.
I don’t even know who we’re fighting in Iraq anymore. First it was a Ba’ath insurgency. Then it was a general Sunni insurgency. Then it was foreign fighters from Syria and Iran. Then it was Al’Qaida in Iraq. Then it was the Sunni insurgency combined with Shiite violence against innocent Sunnis. During the whole thing, local militias were at various times strong allies and bitter enemies of US forces.
Bush tells us we can’t give them a “date for surrender”, but who would we even be surrendering to? The whole goddamned country at one point or another has aimed a weapon at occupying troops.
It’s time for America to leave. We lost, because we didn’t even know what we wanted. How can you win a war, when you don’t even know what the objectives are? We toppled Saddam, and the price we have to pay for doing so is giving Iran a much bigger role in the Middle East. Fighting against that from 12,000 miles away is a completely ridiculous notion.
I strongly believe that we should not surrender in Iraq. The last thing I want to see is us handing over to the insurgents and Islamists control of the United States.
Leaving Iraq, however, looks like a very good idea. The longer we stay, the more harm we seem to do. So, while there is somewhat of a balance to be struck in leaving in more or less calamitous ways, the sooner we leave the better.
The surge is working? The point of the surge was not to supress the insurgency, it was to create the opportunity for political solutions. I know McCain has said these political solutions are starting to happen, but I’d like to hear more about exactly what’s getting accomplished. Note that if all three hundred million of us Americans went to Iraq, we could probably reduce the effectiveness of other military and terrorist forces there a great deal further. What a dumb idea.
So by this logic, if we announce a departure date, the violence will temporarily subside. Wasn’t the point of the Surge to reduce violence to give the Iraqi government time to set up properly? Great! We can do the same thing with a fixed, public withdrawal timetable. Let’s do it!
Not setting a timetable is one of the very very few things Bush has done right in office. We can’t tell the bad guys ‘you just have to hold out until X, then the whole party is yours.’ Victory in this situation is murky at best, but I think part of that victory will be allowing enough time for the Iraqi government to be able to withstand attacks and self-police. When that will be, I have no idea, but I do know that it’s not a never-ending thing.
And for the record, I quite support drafting all registered Republicans of fighting age, but think we should include in that fighting age anyone, male or female, from 18 to 65, and believe that any Republican with a syndicated talk show, news program named after them, or multiple book deals should be reporting to basic training immediately.
But there’s more than one group of bad guys, so any one of them won’t be able to take over if we leave, they’ll just keep fighting each other.
I suppose you’e right that it’s about when we hand over to the Iraqi government. But what you mean is that the process of handing over the never-ending insurgency to the Iraqis is what is not neccessarily never-ending.
If by “not setting a timetable for withdrawal” means “not letting on publicly when we cede all control to the new Iraqi government and begin getting out of there”, then I suppose that’s fine. No sense givong terrorists a date to plan for to blow up more stuff/people than usual and draw even more attention to their “cause”.
If by “not setting a timetable for withdrawal” means “we can’t let the bad guys know because they’ll lay low and fill the power vacuum when we leave”, then that’s just silly. “They” will notice we are leaving even if we don’t tell “them”.
And it isn’t like poof suddenly all the Americans will disappear all at once. It’s a staged process that can be reversed if necessary.
They don’t need to be told, they know it. They know we won’t be there forever, therefore they know that they only have to avoid giving up and victory is inevitable for them.
Wrong. They exist because we prop them up. We leave now, we leave in a decade, they will collapse. Build them a strong enough military to self police and leave, and the military in question will promptly destroy the government - the collaborationist government. It would be their patriotic duty to do so.
I think it’s another Viet Nam. It seems to me that when we pick good fights, the length is determinate. Say, WWII—we didn’t get involved from the gitgo, but once we were in, it was over in four years.
The similarities are certainly there, but I think there are more complex factors at work in Iraq than Vietnam. For instance, Vietnam really only had 3 sides - the North (NVA and Viet Cong), the ARVN / South, and the US. Iraq has at least 5, and often interlinking, ‘sides’. Sunni, Shi’a, Kurd, Baathist, Iranian, Al Queda.
And I fully agree with your second point - when we pick good fights, with demonstrable victory, we win. That’s one corollary between Vietnam and Iraq - neither had defined success criteria before we went in, and I think both will eventually be seen as defeats for America unless something dramatic changes in Iraq in future.
Or in other words, we have to pretend we’re going to stay forever? That’ll discourage the terrorists for sure!
The truth is, this whole question about a “timetable” is a sideshow. If we have good reasons to stay, we should stay. If we have good reasons to go, we should go. We can’t be worrying about whether a timetable could be seen as provocative for a certain tiny number of people.
Pretend, sure. But we should have internal, classified plans, with criteria for withdrawal, that are not published.
One of those criteria should be the ability of the Iraqi government and police to be able to purge themselves of militias and be able to defend themselves from attack by Al Queda or Iraqi militia groups like the Mahdi Army.
I pay taxes in the UK and the US both (being a US citizen and all) - in fact, I’d hazard a guess that I pay more than your average US citizen all in. I AM paying for it.
I don’t agree with why we’re there in the first place, I just think it’s impossible for us to pull out or else we’ll just have to go back in at some point in future for more expense and more deaths.