Thursday, September 21, 2006

No (Time)tables Available

This is why I find a lot of the talk about timetables for withdrawal to be so uninformed. With this kind of outlook from people on the ground, those who think we can plan for a withdrawal (including the Bush administration of course, which has hinted about decreasing troop levels) in the near future are saying it for partisan purposes and do not have the best interests of the Iraqi people in mind.

My favorite claim from people who favor a timetable is that we need to show the Iraqi people that we are leaving so they start to take their own security seriously. This is as delusional as when the Bush administration said that Iraqis should have stopped the looting themselves. Something tells me that the reason there is so much violence isn't because the Iraqis are being lazy about defending themselves. Instead, it is that they still are not capable of it. I agree that we made a mistake going into Iraq, but to paraphrase Colon Powell, "You break it, you own it."

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