Progressives think the United States should set a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. Iraqi politicians uniformly want this. And the Iraqi public is overwhelmingly on board. But conservative analysts have been labeling this policy irresponsible forever. How do they react? If you’re Michael O’Hanlon, through mind-reading:
Clearly, it would be neither practical nor desirable for the entire U.S. military presence in Iraq to simply vanish on Friday. But nobody’s proposing that. Rather, the proposal on the table is to set an end-point for American withdrawal and then begin redeploying forces out in an organized, safe manner. But rather than concede the point that the progressive solution is in line with the desires of the Iraqi people and the main Iraqi political leaders, we get this weird dance of dismissing Iraq’s desire to be free of a foreign occupying army as “political,” assertions that O’Hanlon has secret mind-reading powers to know what people really think, and a kind of straw man focus on the extremely short-term. Ostensibly, however, since 2003 we’ve been looking to create a situation in Iraq where a new government will be stable enough to get along without us. The new government says they’re reaching that point, and want to set a schedule for our departure. Why not take “yes” for an answer?
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