Hey, Remember The Iraq War?
Remember years ago when the Iraq War was the most popular show on television? Oddly enough it’s still on the air but like the last years of ER nobody seems to notice. Now when then-Senator Obama proposed a 16 month time frame for pulling U.S. troops out of the country it was looked at as sheer madness by the right. Cutting and running the derisively called it. But today, as the United States is drastically escalating the battle against the Taliban as we always should have, that Iraq withdrawal seems to be going so well Republican Defense Secretary William Gates says it may be accelerated. Now the politics aside this is fantastic news both for the U.S. military and the national interests of the United States in the region. But this is hardly getting any mention in the national press and is not nearly the cataclysm that most Republicans predicted. Former Vice President Dick Cheney rolled out the tired “well they are just stopping the violence to get us to leave then they will start again really” argument a couple of weeks ago.
I never quite understood the whole argument that if you broadcast time lines about withdrawal that you would be giving the enemy a heads up. Like the alternative was to say nothing, and hope one day the average Iraqi would say, “wait, did you notice that? Did the Americans leave? Wow I didn’t notice.” But to be sure everything is not going to be gumdrops and lollipops there for a while. Violence will continue to be a fact of life, but it will be their situation to deal with, as all sovereign nations must.
Related posts:
- Hey, Remember Iraq?
- Republican Silence On TARP And Iraq Withdrawal Telling
- Six Years On, And Nobody Seems To Care
- TSE Chat Room: Climategate Vs. Iraq War
- On Timetables In Iraq
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Timelines are bad because they tell your enemies when you’re leaving. This seems common sensical. Withdrawing once we thought the Iraqis could handle security is, well, the Bush idea. So, in short, what the fuck are you talking about?