Iraq and ‘The Time Scale For Tolerance’
Over the four year-plus slog of the Iraq war, there has been no more incisive analyst than the WaPo‘s Thomas Ricks.
In a must-read analysis, Ricks writes that there now are two Iraq wars being waged — the one fought in the streets of Baghdad and the war as it is perceived in Washington.
Money quote:
While Washington appears headed toward a political endgame on Iraq, with the White House and Congress sparring over benchmarks and pullout dates, the war on the ground is at an ebb tide. All sides — including U.S. military strategists and Iraqi sectarian leaders and insurgents, as well as regional players such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — are waiting to see whether the new U.S. approach to make the Iraqi capital safer will work. Soldiers on the ground tend to see the Washington debate as irrelevant, and the perspective of many politicians in Washington is that the military schedule is simply too slow.
“The time scale to succeed is years,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary, while “the time scale for tolerance here is 12 months for Democrats and 18 months for Republicans.”
More here.
2 Responses to “Iraq and ‘The Time Scale For Tolerance’”
Yep, that’s the problem. Political support will expire before any measure of success could be achieved at this point. The best we can hope for, and what would actually be a political win-win for both democrats and republicans, would be a measure of success with the Baghdad security plan next spring followed by a drawdown of troops to roughly 1/3 of their current levels over the following 6-9 months. Make no mistake, we will be militarily involved in Iraq for many years to come, but at a level that is sustainable both in terms of deployment cycles and political support.
Ah, finally we hear the words “end game”. There has been no success in Iraq and it is obvious that there will be no success. Hundreds of thousands die right under the nose of our own military, so clearly our efforts have been nothing more than worthless. An utter waste.
I say lets give the Iraqis some more “Shock and Aweâ€?. Lets quickly remove all our troops and usable equipment as soon as possible, then burn the rest. Lets see if we can do it in two weeks. Goodbye! Left the light on for ya, but the bill ain’t paid! See Ya!