'Six Months' Without End
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, September 11, 2007; Page A17
The next six months in Iraq are crucial -- and always will be. That noise you heard yesterday on Capitol Hill was the can being kicked further down the road leading to January 2009, when George W. Bush gets to hand off his Iraq fiasco to somebody else.
It's clear by now that playing for time is the real White House strategy for Iraq. Everything else is tactical maneuver and rhetorical legerdemain -- nothing up my sleeve -- with which the administration is buying time, roughly in six-month increments. Appearing before a joint hearing called by the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, Gen. David H. Petraeus probably won the respite Bush wanted when he said that U.S. military objectives "are in large measure being met."
Never mind whether those objectives make sense. Oh, and if anyone mentions that Congress is supposed to decide what wars this nation fights, not generals or diplomats? Attack them for impugning our nation's finest -- and give that can another kick.
Remember when the Decider asked for his troop escalation -- calling it a "surge" -- and explained what he was trying to achieve? The idea, back in March when the "surge" troops began to arrive, was that 21,500 additional pairs of boots on the ground would so dramatically improve the security situation, especially in Baghdad, that the "unity" government headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki could take dramatic steps toward political reconciliation. That was the key -- a political settlement that would mark the beginning of the end of a de facto sectarian civil war.
Just give us until September and you'll see, Bush promised. Six months....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091002066.html?nav=hcmodule
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