By now we all know the mantra:
"Setting a time table will send the wrong message to the insurgents/terrorists--that all they have to do is wait us out."
Bush said this--not for the first time--in his speech this week.
Paul Krugman points out in his column today that the insurgents hardly need encouragement.
It's far more likely that if the Iraqi government knew that our support had an expiration date, it would both look to its own defenses and, more important, try harder to find a political solution to the insurgency.
The Iraq that emerges once U.S. forces are gone won't bear much resemblance to the free-market, pro-American, Israel-friendly democracy the neocons promised. But it will pose less of a terrorist threat than the Iraq we have now.
If the U.S. were to suddenly withdraw from Iraq, al Qaeda would undoubtedly cheer and claim victory, but one suspects that in their hidden hovels they are praying to their warped vision of God that the U.S. stays exactly where we are, mired and trapped in a conflict that could well surpass the Israeli-Palestinian issue as the raison-d'etre for violent Islamist radicalism.
The person who best gives lie to Bush's rational is none other than Defense Secretary Rumsfeld:
"Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."
"Coalition forces, foreign forces, are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."
Ah, so these insurgents expect to go the distance, with or without the U.S.?
Rumsfeld acknowledges Krugman's point in advance. The state of the insurgency's morale would hardly be affected by setting a specific withdrawl plan. And it might do wonders for the morale of U.S. forces.
The only legitimate rationale for failing to set such a plan, would be if the state of Iraqi's security forces was so miserable that the U.S. could not assure that they actually will be ready in any reasonable time frame. What has been conspicuously missing from the Bush regime's recent defenses on its Iraq policies was an acknowledgement of this reality:
Authorities also suspect that insiders are providing insurgents with the identities of police and military commanders, who are being gunned down on an almost daily basis, typically on their way to or from work. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr has alleged that the names and addresses of police are even being sold on the streets, the motive often profit rather than politics.
The pool of possible infiltrators is large. About 1,600 "ghost names" have been discovered on interior's payroll, Iraqi officials said, and the search is continuing. Not all are suspected infiltrators, but many have access to bases and sensitive installations.
Most Iraqi soldiers and police have shown strong courage and commitment, particularly considering that they are generally poorly equipped compared to U.S. troops and more of them have been killed. But Iraqi officials and high-ranking U.S. commanders concede that Iraqis' ultimate effectiveness in a grueling counterinsurgency campaign hinges in no small part on eradicating rampant infiltration of the security forces.