T.S. Eliot famously wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” but it may be September for the Bush administration since it increasingly appears that will be when the proverbial finally hits the fan and there is bipartisan agreement that the war in Iraq is lost and it is time to get out.
This moment, or month or whatever, has been a long time coming, of course, and it is George Bush himself who drew a line in the Iraqi sand in declaring in April that General David Petraeus should be given six months to allow the White House’s last-gasp surge strategy to work.
The welcome result is that Democrats and Republicans alike are coalescing around the notion that if there is not discernible progress by September, then the war is over bar the shouting.
“September is the key,” Representative James Moran Jr., a Virginia Democrat and member of a House committee that funds the war, told The Washington Post. “If we don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, September is going to be a very bleak month for this administration.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, who has steadfastly backed the president, broke ranks in speaking for many fellow Republican congressfolk: “By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn’t, what’s Plan B.”
There is no Plan B, of course, and never has been, but a September “deadline†has great appeal even if no one has a clue as to what discernible progress might be.
Here’s why . . .
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