Actually, I've been looking at it slightly differently.
If the Iraqis know that we're gone in September of next year, say, they can start planning now, knowing that it's real, knowing that they have no more scapegoat, and knowing that they will have the country that they are willing to fight to keep. They have 15 months to make a country they can sustain.
They can ask other nations to help them; some nations that wouldn't help bail the US's fat out of the fire might be willing to help the Iraqi people, and there will no longer be any conflicts between where the US has command authority and where Iraq does.
The idea that we must not leave seems based upon one of two ideas.
1) we're doing some good by staying (or, we clearly *can* do some good, some time in the near future, by staying), or 2) we're helping to keep the bad guys pinned down. ("we can fight them there or fight them here", which only makes sense if we have them pinned down. If we have them pinned down, then we're "fighting them there" because they can't leave. If we don't, the only reason we're fighting them there is that they think the can do more damage to us there.)
I think that 2) is completely false; I think they're fighting us there because that's where they can hurt us most easily. I think that 1) can be argued, but it hasn't been argued, it's just been asserted. If someone shows me that we are, or will be, doing more good than harm, then I'm willing to buy the "we broke it, we should fix it" argument.
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Date: 2007-05-02 04:27 pm (UTC)If the Iraqis know that we're gone in September of next year, say, they can start planning now, knowing that it's real, knowing that they have no more scapegoat, and knowing that they will have the country that they are willing to fight to keep. They have 15 months to make a country they can sustain.
They can ask other nations to help them; some nations that wouldn't help bail the US's fat out of the fire might be willing to help the Iraqi people, and there will no longer be any conflicts between where the US has command authority and where Iraq does.
The idea that we must not leave seems based upon one of two ideas.
1) we're doing some good by staying (or, we clearly *can* do some good, some time in the near future, by staying),
or
2) we're helping to keep the bad guys pinned down. ("we can fight them there or fight them here", which only makes sense if we have them pinned down. If we have them pinned down, then we're "fighting them there" because they can't leave. If we don't, the only reason we're fighting them there is that they think the can do more damage to us there.)
I think that 2) is completely false; I think they're fighting us there because that's where they can hurt us most easily. I think that 1) can be argued, but it hasn't been argued, it's just been asserted. If someone shows me that we are, or will be, doing more good than harm, then I'm willing to buy the "we broke it, we should fix it" argument.