Exit strategy?

What about this statement, from the same critic: ""I think it's also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn."

Agree or disagree

Disagree. This is like asking a chess player to lay out for how many moves he is going to stay in the match he is playing. It's like asking a boxer to lay out in which round he is planning to knock out his opponent. You can't lay out meaningful plans about such things.

Thomas wrote:

Disagree. This is like asking a chess player to lay out for how many moves he is going to stay in the match he is playing. It's like asking a boxer to lay out in which round he is planning to knock out his opponent. You can't lay out meaningful plans about such things.

That is not an apt analogy. In chess, both players know exactly what their exit strategies are: checkmate the king. There may be innumerable ways to achieve that goal, but the goal is absolutely clear. Both sides know how to leave the game because both sides know what it means to "win" the game. In Iraq, however, we don't know how to leave because we don't know what it means to "win" the war.

In the fertile "bread basket" of central Iraq's Diyala valley, roadside-bomb attacks have nearly stopped.

This ethnically complex patchwork of towns, villages, fields, and orchards, which US commanders call a "little Iraq," has seen its share of insurgent activity since 2003. But nowadays, the local Sunni Arabs appear inclined to climb aboard the US-backed political process, rather than trying to derail it through violence.

The relative peace in the breadbasket is the result of a carefully managed transition from US to Iraqi security responsibility, US and Iraqi commanders say.

While roadside-bomb attacks in July were down more than 30 percent compared to the same month last year, the drop has been especially drastic in August. The local Iraqi Army unit, the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, officially took the lead in a roughly 1,158 square-mile battle space, containing nearly 300,000 residents, on July 31.

"We're responsible for actual security, and it is going well," says the unit's commander, Col. Theya Ismail al-Tamimi, a former intelligence officer under Saddam Hussein who has gained the Americans' respect by keeping constant pressure on the insurgents. "Attacks are a fraction of what they were," says Colonel Theya, as he is known to both his own troops and the Americans.

US troops recently closed down one of their forward operating bases near here, "since the area was so calm," Lt. Col. Roger Cloutier, a US battalion commander, says.

The breadbasket borders the notorious "Sunni triangle," the mainly Sunni Arab swath of north-central Iraq where the insurgency started in 2003, and where it has proven most enduring ever since.

Yet Diyala province could be among the first areas handed over to full Iraqi security control. Planned reductions of US-led coalition forces, which numbered 161,500 in July, might begin as early as next year - depending on political conditions, as well as the readiness of Iraqi military units, US commanders say.

About 79,900 Iraqi Army soldiers and national guardsmen have been counted as being "operational" in August, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index. The stated US goal is to train another 18,639 troops.

"In the Sunni triangle, Diyala is well ahead of the others," according to Col. Steven Salazar, US brigade commander for northeastern Iraq.

Iraqi troops still rely heavily on US support, from planning raids, to stand-by air support in case things turn bad, to detainee processing. But the Iraqi 2/2 Battalion is ready for its training wheels to come off, most US liaison officers say.

Theya agrees: "Right now we have the ability to do this on our own."

What are your thoughts about the boxing analogy, Joe?

The longer we wait, the more progress made--the more likely the terrorists causing mayhem are likely to be killed, captured or just tired. The stronger the Iraqis are to care for themselves, the more experienced the politicians and citizens in Iraq are.

I don't think you have any basis in fact for your argument.

The longer we wait, the more progress made--the more likely the terrorists causing mayhem are likely to be killed, captured or just tired.

The longer we wait, the more progress made--the more likely the terrorists causing mayhem are likely to be killed, captured or just tired. The stronger the Iraqis are to care for themselves, the more experienced the politicians and citizens in Iraq are.

I don't think you have any basis in fact for your argument.

On that understanding, I disagree again: We do know what "winning the war" means. It means that Iraq is governed by a democratic, internationally cooperative regime that enforces human rights, and that controls the country firmly enough to secure the peace between its deeply divided citizens.

The problem for America is not that it doesn't know what "winning" means -- we will know this state of affairs when we see it. The problem is that America probably won't win anytime soon, under any meaningful definition of that word. It may well be losing, and again that's a situation we'll have no trouble knowing when we see it.

Your government needs to make up its mind on what to settle for, then try to achieve what's possible, rather than an increasingly elusive victory.

So if your source criticizes Bush for not facing up to reality, I agree. Everything I read about his administration suggests that they can't tell reality from their own campaign spin. But if the criticism is that Bush did make up his mind about what he's truly willing to settle for, and that he just isn't communicating his decision, I continue to disagree with the critic. Announcing your true goals in a situation like this will undermine your bargaining position. Or, to update my analogy, announcing a plan would be like announcing what price you would settle for while haggling on an oriental bazaar.

Lash wrote:

The longer we wait, the more progress made--the more likely the terrorists causing mayhem are likely to be killed, captured or just tired.

And the longer we stay the more Americans will die.

Lash wrote:

The longer we wait, the more progress made--the more likely the terrorists causing mayhem are likely to be killed, captured or just tired.

And the longer we stay the more Americans will die.

joefromchicago wrote:

Lash wrote:

The longer we wait, the more progress made--the more likely the terrorists causing mayhem are likely to be killed, captured or just tired.

And the longer we stay the more Americans will die.

That happens in war.

Its a horrible fact of war.

Thomas wrote:

On that understanding, I disagree again: We do know what "winning the war" means. It means that Iraq is governed by a democratic, internationally cooperative regime that enforces human rights, and that controls the country firmly enough to secure the peace between its deeply divided citizens.

That doesn't quite fit with Bush's claim that Iraq represents "the central front in the war on terror." If all we want is a democratic regime in Iraq, then what about the "terrorists?"

I'm afraid, Thomas, that I don't share your optimism with regard to the Bush administration's alleged war aims

But if it is true that the war will be "won" when Iraq establishes a democratic government, then why wouldn't the administration announce that it will be withdrawing its troops on the day after Iraq installs its first democratically elected government? Wouldn't that be an exit strategy? Wouldn't that be an acceptable timetable for withdrawl?

Thomas wrote:

It may well be losing, and again that's a situation we'll have no trouble knowing when we see it.

I disagree. It sometimes takes years before a government can see that it is losing a war. Vietnam is a case in point.

If there is something that the US can call a "victory" in this war, why not identify it? And if the US has no intentions of staying in Iraq beyond this "victory," then why not say so?

We appear to have a mismatch on what we're talking about. On re-reading this thread, I notice that you keep talking about "exit strategy" and "involvement", but you never specify your subject. Involvement in what? Exit strategy out of what? Perhaps it would help if you clarified this.

For the record, this is the first time anyone accused me of too much optimism about the Bush administration.

I am perfectly open to the suggestion that Bush is lying about his true war aims. But words have meanings; most of their meanings are well-understood by the English-speaking public. In particular, I believe the phrase "victory in Iraq" has a well-understood public meaning for the speakers of American English. George Bush doesn't get to redefine the meaning of those words any more than the Supreme Court gets to redefine the meaning of the words "commerce among the several states". (You were waiting for that one, weren't you?) It is to this public meaning of the words "victory in Iraq" that I referred to. I believe I have accurately described it, and I believe America is not going to get it.

I would prefer the first democratically defeated government that actually goes home, or the first major conflict between Sunnis and Shiites that gets settled in court instead of through a shootout, or the first time women achieve equal rights under Iraqs new civil law, which is largely islamic; or whatever of the above happens last. Of course, either of the above may well take a near-infinite amount of time. So while such a benchmark would retain the form of a timetable, it would lack the substance of it. An employee of a large corporation, I am not a fan of Potempkin timetables, and I'd prefer to do without one.

Well, when did you see that Vietnam was lost?

As you know, I make quite a point of distinguishing between "we", which is what I was talking about, and "a government", which is what you were talking about.

Because if I am right about the true prospects of America's involvment in Iraq, they would have to define victory so far down that identifying it would demoralize American civilians and soldiers to the point of apathy. That, in turn, would put pressure on the administration to settle for something even worse.

I strongly disagree that there is a common, "public" meaning of "victory in Iraq." But maybe that's because I don't understand what you mean by a "public meaning."

But Bush hasn't even given us an unrealistic timetable.

Well, when we're talking about realizing that a war is either won or lost, the important ones doing the realizing are the ones making the decisions regarding that war.

If the administration got the nation involved in a war, the winning of which was "so far down that identifying it would demoralize American civilians and soldiers to the point of apathy," then it should never have gotten the nation involved in that war in the first place.

Having done so, however, it is duty bound to get the nation out of it, and to explain how it will do so.