I frankly admit that I have no expertise in military strategy, yet I have been feeling particularly dense lately. When I read the calls for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the heck they are talking about.
The time to talk about a timetable for withdrawal is when the mission is over. Then you start asking: Why are we still there? Should we set a timetable for withdrawal? But our troops are sorely needed right now. Things are still pretty dodgy, as Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy surely realize.
I was just looking at a 2003 list of US military installations around the world. The list has several pages just listing all the US military facilities still in Germany. There is a long list of facilities in South Korea as well, and a considerable number in Japan and Italy. If we are still providing a major portion of the defense of countries 50 and 60 years after entering them, countries that are among the wealthiest in their regions, why would we set a quick timetable for withdrawal from Iraq? Do Reid and Kennedy really think that things are going so much better than they were in Germany after World War II that we should be planning to leave Iraq in 18 months or two years or whatever timetable they might have in mind? One might talk about withdrawal from Afghanistan because it is going well, but realistically, it would be safer to stay until our recently won victory is more secure and stable. Iraq is not even close to being in the condition that Afghanistan is in. Why would anyone talk about setting a timetable now?
So what are those calling for a timetable talking about? Setting a moderately quick withdrawal date would be surrendering in a war that we are (at the moment at least) on balance winning, though the ultimate outcome is not certain, and it appears that we are still years away from even an Afghanistan-style victory. Most politicians would not openly advocate surrender in the current situation, so I doubt that they mean to suggest this (though Kennedy may be in effect recommending this).
If victory, not surrender, is intended, then surely we need to win the war first before setting a withdrawal timetable. This seems so obvious that I honestly can’t figure out what I’m missing. My first impression is to think that any American politician urging a moderately quick timetable is either advocating surrender or is so clueless that they should not be taken seriously in public on defense and military matters. Yet Reid and Kennedy are not dumb (despite some recent gaffes), and they have infinitely more foreign policy experience than I do. If they mean to urge surrender because the price of victory is too high, that is a comprehensible argument (though not one I share).
But in private at least, I hear people saying that now that the elections are over and went pretty well, we need to reveal our exit strategy and set a timetable for getting out of Iraq. Most of these people do not want to surrender. Urging a timetable to those wanting to try to win the war seems like the kind of idea that one would hear from a high-school student, an idea that the MSM would laugh off the public stage if put forward by someone they didn’t respect.
When I read calls for a timetable in the current situation, I really can’t figure out what the heck are they talking about.
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