Iraq exit, bipartisanship, "the region" issue and all that stuff.

[pinto]

Watching a repeat of Tuesday's C SPAN appearances by Rep. Meehan and Mr. Kristol on Iraq exit possibilities, I am initially struck that, yes, the topic is actually being addressed. And spoken to not only in this Brookings Institute forum, but at other venues by Kennedy and Woolsey, et al. Creeping realities!, Batman.

In bringing this issue to the fore, Meehan makes a good case for a public commitment, to Americans and Iraqis alike, to an exit timetable. On the one hand, we here could see that "light at the end of the tunnel" and Iraqis could see a realistic end game to our occupation and the opportunity to resume their ownership of Iraq without our interference.

It seems a rational and honest recognition if we are really going to take a limited role and respect Iraqi sovereignty.

Meehan did not duck the security issue about an exit. Instead, he hits the administration for their failure to use already allocated US funds in real-time, on the ground, toward the growth of an Iraqi security presence.

Mr. Kristol is, in this appearance, surprisingly bipartisan in tone, while clearly disagreeing with the Representative. Kristol's primary point concerns public disclosure. He sees that as a danger to the process, which he claims to support, yet goes further to tie that process to a danger in "the region". While bluntly blaming Rumsfeld for the current situation, Kristol maintains the goal of their regional strategy in the mid east. Consequently, he also slips the warning of a vacuum in influence should we leave Iraq, implying a familiar "domino" meme for we baby boomer's and readers of history. I am reminded that the Republican foreign policy agenda morphs incrementally, geographically and unilaterally.

It seems a dangerous brinkmanship, and an overstated assumption of popular American support for a stealth foreign policy.

It was a great hour of C SPAN programming and a good start to a debate we desperately need, given a President who says we'll leave Iraq "when the job is done".....whatever that means.