In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
....
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Congratulations, he admits the surge was successful ... after its over.
Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
What??? The Bush administration has said for years we'd leave if and when Iraq was ready to take over its own security and requested that. Neither Bush nor McCain is proposing to refuse to leave.
Meanwhile, Obama is talking out of both sides of his mouth. In your piece, he says, "Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq .."
But to Fareed Zakaria, the day before, he said:
"ZAKARIA: But you could imagine a situation where, if the Iraqi government wanted it, 30,000 American troops are still in Iraq 10 years from now.
OBAMA: You know, I have been very careful not to put numbers on what a residual force would look like. What I am absolutely convinced of is that, to maintain permanent bases, to have ongoing combat forces, to have an open-ended commitment of the sort that John McCain and George Bush have advocated, is a mistake.
cnn.com
Yes, he's saying his position is radically different from Bush's and McCain's, but that supposed radical difference (no permanent bases, redeploying out of Iraq) doesn't mean he'd rule out there being 30K American troops in Iraq 10 years from now. How do you redeploy out of Iraq and maintain no permanent bases and also have a "residual force" as he calls it? |
