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Monday, July 11, 2005
The only timetable that matters
Excuse me while I step inside the special brand of cognitive dissonance known to mere mortals as the Bush administration:
- Of course we can't set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. If we do that, the terrorists have already won...
- Of course we have to bring troops home by mid-2006. If we don't do that, the Democrats will win...
I'll give you one guess which sentiment seems to be prevailing in the Bush White House:
The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to withdraw the majority of their troops from Iraq by the middle of next year, according to a secret memo written for British Prime Minister Tony Blair by Defense Secretary John Reid.
The paper, which is marked "Secret -- UK Eyes Only," said "emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," allowing a reduction in overall U.S.-led forces in Iraq to 66,000 troops. The troop level is now at about 160,000, including 138,000 American troops, according to a military spokesman in Baghdad.
...The memo, posted on the newspaper's Web site, notes a debate between U.S. officials at the Pentagon and military leaders in Iraq, saying that officials in Washington favor "a relatively bold reduction in force numbers," differing with battlefield commanders, "whose approach is more cautious."
I don't object in principle to an aggressive timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, or even keeping such a timetable out of public view. After all, few knew about Eisenhower's bet with Montgomery that the Allies would be in Berlin by Christmas, 1944, until well after the war.
So if the Bush administration has a secret plan to defeat the insurgency by the 2006 elections -- and actually pulls it off -- good for them. Peace to Iraq and American troops home. I can think of few better things for the world.
But it sounds less like a secret plan to win the war and far more like a secret plan to win an election.
For those who care, my position remains the same: we should set a timetable for Iraqi self-governance. We should set aggressive goals for the formation of a permanent, representative Iraqi government and training of Iraqi security forces. When the Iraqis have a government in place and the capacity to protect themselves, we should withdraw our troops as rapidly as possible. The key is to hold American and Iraqi leaders accountable for progress.
