Recently, the Senate rejected a resolution initiated by Democrats for the Administration to produce a timetable for the US to pull out of Iraq.
Meanwhile, in Cairo Egypt, Iraqi leaders called for a timetable to be set for American withdrawal.
Why is the push by Democrats wrong-headed and the other right? Simple.
One would be Americans abandoning a promise and signaling weakness, while the other expresses the wishes of the elected leaders of a sovereign nation. This will be especially true after the December elections.
Now at this point I will point out that no timetable was set in Cairo. Nor was the definition of withdrawal set down. But even if they were, it would be an expression of, "thank you very much, but we'll take it from here" while the other is an expression of cowardice an abandonment. It would let every enemy we have in the world that all you need to win was a good PR agent. You too could be the Mouse that Roared.
Hitler missed that one....
But I suspect that some Democrats may have observed that at some point there will be a draw-down of US troops and rather than let the Administration have that victory, they decided to preemptively act in such a way that when it does happen, they can claim it was they who forced the reduction: hence Murtha and his ilk. Notice few, and not even Murtha voted for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq when such an opportunity was presented in the House. That's because it's theater, nothing more. The vast majority in Congress know the stakes.
Perhaps. Time will tell.
But you know what, we're still in Germany and we're still in Japan. I suspect that we will still be in Iraq 40 years from now if things go well. But so long as Iraqi's are taking the lead, and the US is in the background, it won't matter. It will seem like we left.
And that will be enough for Democrats to claim victory.
And that will be enough for the US to remain secure.
