Cynthia Tucker wants you to know her "messy truth about exiting Iraq."

[ProSense]

VOTERS MUST KNOW THE MESSY TRUTH ABOUT EXITING IRAQ

<...>

The Democrats are right to insist on a significant withdrawal of U.S. forces; the so-called surge calls for 160,000 troops remaining in Iraq for an unspecified length of time. That's cynical and callous, asking Americans to sacrifice their sons and daughters for no good reason.

But an abrupt exit would also be a bad idea. If a new president withdrew U.S. troops en masse in early 2009, the Iraqi conflict would not end with the occupation. It could -- and probably would -- spread beyond Iraq, inflaming the strife between Shiites, dominant in Iran and Iraq, and Sunnis, dominant in much of the rest of the region. At the very least, the United States needs to leave enough troops behind to keep Iran and others from making matters worse.

This is a messy and difficult conversation -- hardly the sort of simple, optimistic message that consultants and PR types try to hard-wire into their candidates. After all, the bring-the-boys-(and girls)-home message is likely to win the most votes, especially in the Democratic primaries.

So forgive me for believing that some things are more important than winning elections. War is one of them. It's a matter in which even elected officials ought to be prepared to put principle above politics.

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Is she suggesting that a withdrawal a year from now, no, make that two years from now is, uh, precipitous?

The goal of Tucker, long-standing advocate of the Democrats-voted-for-the-war rhetoric, has always been to drag the illegal occupation out by any means necessary: Blame the Dems for Bush's actions, then blame the Dems for not staying the course.

[tblue]

1. But the truth is a Republic admin will keep the war going longer, possibly indefinitely

Nobody ever said leaving Iraq would be easy. That's the problem. There are no good options, so we may as well do the one that extricates Americans from the hornets nest, eat some crow, and get the neighboring states to help this fledgling gov't pull itself together. We gotta leave there sooner or later, so why not sooner?

[leftofthedial]

18. what evidence is there that the Democrats would *ever* actually end

the illegal occupation?

they've shown zero signs of doing that so far.

[tblue]

19. They're working on it. I hope.

[leftofthedial]

21. I don't know

All I've seen so far is them funding the status quo for at least another 18 months and pretty assuredly longer, given the less than restrictive language about continuing.

The leading Democratic candidates are either overtly pro-illegal-occupation like Clinton or ambiguously kinda maybe sort of vaguely in favor of better oversight of the illegal occupation like Obama or Edwards.

:shrug:

[TwilightGardener]

2. I agree with her, though, in that we need a responsible and incremental

approach, to minimize the bloodshed. But the world will have to face facts: when we pull out, there WILL be bloodshed--we need to steel ourselves for that and accept it, unfortunately. This is the predicament the Chimperor put us in.

[Disturbed]

3. Does anyone have a crystal ball?

By '08 who knows what the situation in Iraq will be?

The Dems are willing to support this hideous Occupation until '08 and leave thousands of troops plus Mercs in Iraq to train Iraqi troops and fight with the Insurgency and al Q. This is actually not much of a Draw Down. For the Pres. to veto this is pure political bullshit.

[peacebird]

4. there is and has been horrific bloodshed for innocent Iraqi's since the war began

What makes you think it will be worse when we leave?

:wtf:

Perhaps it will spike up initially, will it reach the levels of death that our "reign" has? I don't believe it will.

[TwilightGardener]

6. I am not and have never been a "Get Out Now" gal, so I'm coming from

the phased/gradual approach. Get the Iraqis used to a little less of our presence and a little more responsiblity over time, continue to work on political solutions and agreements, and step in or call in the UN/NATO if serious genocide-stopping is warranted. And by serious, I mean thousands and hundreds of thousands dead. I don't think we can stop the daily tit-for-tat that's going on now. I think we can draw down our combat role responsibly. We can't just be "all out" within months or a year--or even two years. That's unrealistic and cruel to the Iraqis--we owe them better.

[jwirr]

8. Nam vets, what happened after we pulled out there? I recognize

that there will probably still be a war going on - a civil war and it will be bloody. I do not think that can be avoided - we started this and it is not going to get better as long as we are there.

Gandhi once said about WWII that if we had not gotten into a war the number of people killed would have still been the same. Hitler would have killed just as many people as were killed on both sides in the war. I don't know if that is correct but it is worth thinking about.

We have upset the whole ME and we are not going to be able to fix it. Outsiders as occupiers will never be welcome there in any ME country. Maybe the fact that Syria and Saudi seem to be trying to pull the Arab nations together is our only hope over there.

[annabanana]

5. Whether we leave now, or 40 years from now... there will

be a paroxysm of blood and disaster. If we leave now there will be fewer dead Americans.

[KharmaTrain]

7. There Are No Honest Brokers...WTF Is "Winning"???

Now letme get this straight...we are keeping our troops in the midst of a civil war our arrogant and greedy "leaders" got us into for fun and profit...for what? To bring democracy, remove the evil Saddam...perpetrator of 9/11, keep the terrorists there rather than attacking here ...i'm dizzy in trying to figure out what "objective" we're going after.

So...by keeping our troops in that stinkin' desert (which just happens to have lots of oil) we'll somehow hold off some massive conflagration? It's as though the "insurgents" will just vanish? Somehow our troops will rub out thousands of years of religious strife and over 4 years of wholescale pillage? Somehow these people are just gonna vanish...despite the fact they live in that country? The stupidity of any "logic" for prolonging this misery defies any common sense.

What's worse is we have few options. Several years ago I could have seen an Arab league force help create a transition and cover for our forces and possibly help create a national government...but that's gone now thanks to this regime's ham-handed attempts at "diplomacy". The Shiites won't trust the Saudis or any Sunnis nor will the Sunnis trust Iranians and so on. It's not a matter of if the country will fracture, but when and the longer this fact is ignored, the worse it will be for American military and diplomatic prestige and a lot more wasted lives. Pull out today or 2 years from now, the result will be an implosion of whatever "central" authority is left in Baghdad. Just like Lebanon, Iraq will be a state of states...unless a new Saddam steps forward. Our military can delay this from happening, but not prevent it and our forces get more demoralized and weakened every day.

[TwilightGardener]

9. Very well said--we opened up a giant can of worms by creating a

huge power vacuum, and it's going to be a fucking free-for-all as soon as we start taking our troops off of every street corner, which we MUST start doing fairly soon--we are, I believe, creating as many insurgents as we kill. They will keep coming out of the woodwork to destabilize the situation, and then there will be the reprisal killings, and then reprisals for the reprisals--and so on and so forth. The best thing that can happen is another (hopefully more benevolent) dictator, but the Neocons won't go for that--what would happen to the oil plan and permanent bases without our American-controlled puppet government?

BushCo wants to kick this can further down the road, when the bloody mess can happen on someone else's watch while he practices his golf swing in Crawford. I say start pulling the combat troops out in phases and redeploy, and be ready to adjust to a fluid situation--that's why it's so hard to mandate a timetable, I think.

[ProSense]

10. What's the fluid situation?

An escalating civil war? Does anyone really believe that U.S. military on the ground can mitigate civil war in Iraq? The timetable is for orderly transfer to Iraqi security forces. That can be controlled. The civil war is what it is, and it's being inflamed by U.S. presence on the ground. The notion that flexibility should be allowed to temper civil war is lunacy. A timetable and diplomacy, not an open-ended commitment to more of the same, is the best approach to extracting U.S. forces from this quagmire.



Edited to add missing word (underlined).

[TwilightGardener]

12. A fluid situation would be, say, a series of large-scale chem attacks that can

be quelled by shifting troops into the area from the border/region--or the discovery of Al Qaeda training camps. Anything that our military can actually DO something about--yes, we need to get out of the civil war, but we still can and must serve some functions there. We dismantled their institutions and infrastructure--we owe them some peacekeeping, training, rebuilding.

[roody]

14. Maybe some responsible nation can volunteer for

peacekeeping, training, and rebuilding. US has ZERO credibility.

[ProSense]

15. That's exactly what the plan sets a deadline to do:

get out of the civil war. The plan also includes the rest, but the troop withdrawal must proceed with a defined end.

[TwilightGardener]

17. A binding timetable would be tough to adhere to, depending on what

happens on the ground, and any kind of serious enforcement would get the 'Pugs screaming about how the Dems are micromanaging the war and tying commanders' hands, especially if things turn particularly bloody for either Iraqis or American troops. A nonbinding timetable with benchmarks at least forces some accountability from Chimpy and Gates, and creates the expectation in American minds that our troops will soon be coming home--that expectation will become a tide in the public mind that will be difficult for Chimpy to turn back.

[ProSense]

20. The Repubs are going to scream anyway. The deadline passed!

The public already knows the civil war will continue and they want the troops home now. You don't thing a binding deadline forces accountability?

[daleo]

11. Things won't be different in two years, or three, or four, or five

This is part of the folly of thinking more time will turn things around (and even allow a "win", whatever that is).

[Horse with no Name]

13. The problem with Iraq is that Bush really has the best of both worlds

If he kicks and screams about timetables, yet they impose them anyway, then when it all goes to shit (and it will), he can point the finger and say "I told you so".
If we wait until he is out of office, then when the next President pulls the troops out and it all goes to shit (and it will), the Republicans can say "Bush knew what he was talking about thats why he left the troops".
It truly is a no-win situation.

[MGKrebs]

16. I think the assumption is that troop strength would remain at least 'as is' until then,

and then in early 2009, the earliest point at which a new President could act, that some might try to do something sudden.

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. This is yesterday's meme. Dems already concede troops will remain in Iraq forever due to

(a) Bush's oil law (which Clinton also wanted)
(b) looming war with Cambodia -- er, Iran -- which "changes everything".