{"id":10571,"date":"2007-04-20T12:37:54","date_gmt":"2007-04-20T16:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10571.html"},"modified":"2007-04-20T12:37:54","modified_gmt":"2007-04-20T16:37:54","slug":"is-the-clock-really-ticking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/is-the-clock-really-ticking\/","title":{"rendered":"Is ‘the clock’ really<\/i> ticking?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reader H.B. alerted me to some interesting comments<\/a> Defense Secretary Robert Gates made in Baghdad yesterday, as part of a direct challenge to the Maliki government to step up and do more — quickly.<\/p>\n

“Frankly, I would like to see faster progress,” Gates said, moments before boarding a military aircraft to travel to Iraq. <\/p>\n

Continued debate on Capital Hill over potential troop redeployments help show the Iraqis that “this isn’t an open-ended commitment” on the part of the United States military, he said. <\/p>\n

“Our president has said that our patience is not unlimited,” Gates said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gates added, “The clock is ticking<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

All of that sounds very nice, but it’s also entirely inconsistent with the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. If the White House’s rhetoric is to be believed, the clock can’t<\/i> be ticking — because if it were, the “evildoers” would simply have wait for the clock to stop<\/i> ticking.<\/p>\n

It’s why our commitment to Iraq, the Bush gang says, has to remain open-ended. If there’s a point at which the “suiciders” and “dead-enders” think we’ll leave, they’ll “wait us out.” It’s why timelines are akin to surrender and benchmarks have to remain toothless.<\/p>\n

Gates also told reporters, “The Iraqis have to know that this isn’t an open-ended commitment.” They do? All evidence suggests the exact opposite — that Iraqis have to know this is<\/i> an open-ended commitment.
\n
\nBy definition, this is a conflict with no intended end. The administration says the war is over when Iraq can sustain, govern, and defend itself. As far as Bush, McCain, and Lieberman are concerned, we can’t leave until it does<\/i>. By any reasonable definition of the phrase, that is, of course, an open-ended commitment.<\/p>\n

Likewise, counter to what Gates said yesterday, our patience has<\/em> to be “unlimited.” If not, we’ll abandon Iraq and terrorists will fill a power vacuum that will endanger the world. That is the administration’s worldview, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

If this debate is going to have any intellectual seriousness to it, war supporters, including Gates, have to admit the obvious. In January, on Meet the Press, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), was at least honest about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Graham: We should try to win this war. And the day you say we’re going to withdraw — three months, six months, a year from now — the effect will be that the militants will be emboldened, the moderates will be frozen, and we will have sent the message to the wrong people. Who started this…<\/p>\n

Russert: So we’re stuck there forever.<\/p>\n

Graham: Well, you stay there with a purpose to win.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, given this worldview, we very well may<\/i> be stuck there forever.<\/p>\n

All Dems have been saying for a year is let’s at least start the clock so that Iraqis know that it is ticking. And all Republicans have been saying for a year is that this isn’t even a remote possibility.<\/p>\n

So, Secretary Gates, I’m afraid you went a long way to tell Iraqis and the world the exact opposite of your administration’s policy. Nice try, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reader H.B. alerted me to some interesting comments Defense Secretary Robert Gates made in Baghdad yesterday, as part of a direct challenge to the Maliki government to step up and do more — quickly. “Frankly, I would like to see faster progress,” Gates said, moments before boarding a military aircraft to travel to Iraq. Continued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}