Every Presidential candidate has a plan to leave Iraq within 6 months to 2 years (that is, 1 to 4 Friedmans). I'd like to explore the 2-4 Friedman, just over the horizon "sweet spot" that most of these candidates are in and why I think it's utter BS on most of their parts.
First off, I'd like to establish what I'm not saying here:
I'm not saying this war was the right thing to do. I'm not even so much saying that we should stick it out for longer than the time it takes to pull up the stakes and leave, although I'm in the 1% of kossacks who believes so (see disclaimer below).
I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton, major US war with Iran, AIPAC, or even George W Bush. Let's stick to Iraq, people, it's where the actual shooting is happening. Bush is finished soon and a fairly static figure - he should be thrown in jail but everything else about him is beside the point.
Most importantly, I'm not telling you what you want to hear. The choices we face are most likely between letting genocide/civil war happen or attempting to stand in the way of X hundred thousand deaths completely unsure of whether it will work. Moral right and wrongs that aren't measured in estimated future body counts should be a distant second to all those that do.
I'm talking about current legislation and honesty. Why is it all targetted at 2-4 Friedmans in the future? Because you're "doing something" without "doing something rash" and certainly not "doing something precipitously". You get your name in the headlines saying we gotta find a way to leave, and everyone likes that. But if we're going to leave and abandon all prospects of staving off ethnic cleansing, why not do it right this second? Even if things get better in the next 2-4 friedmans, it will be a fragile kind of better that would evaporate overnight if our troops left. So if we're going to leave and abandon the prospects of saving Iraq from itself, why not call for withdrawal in 6 months? The US Military can move an entire division with all its equipment anywhere in the world in 4 days. We've gotta be able to get out of Iraq in a few months.
Now, I'm in the 1% of democrats who likes the surge plan. It should've been done 4 years ago when it had a reasonable chance of success. I like the emphasis on continual presence, the de-emphasis on trying to kill insurgents, the plans for company-level forts across Baghdad, and I love the fact that the Mahdi army and Badr brigades are laying down their arms while some of their own lieutenants are arrested. Combine that with Ahmedenijad's sudden domestic weakness and there's potential here. Maybe a 10% chance, even. Iraq's worth a 10% shot to me, considering how much another year costs us compared to total destruction and chaos.
And I understand that just about everyone disagrees with me. But if so, why would you support any kind of "timeline" for withdrawal? We're not gonna make anything better by doing it on a schedule. 1-2 friedmans from now, the new security strategy will either be starting to work or a failure. If you're committing to a timeline to leave in 2-4 friedmans, why not either commit to leave ASAP or commit to waiting a year and seeing how the new strategy works?
If you support a resolution demanding withdrawal over a year from now, you ought to just demand that we leave right now. It's either leave right this second and open the floodgates towards ethnic cleansing, or stick it out for another year with a minimal chance of accomplishing anything.
But a timeline to leave in 18 months regardless of what happens in that time period? Headline-grabbing idiocy. We ought to demand the unsugared, gritty truth from our politicians. Either we're facing ethnic cleansing or a low-odds effort to prevent it.