It is not possible to set a deadline for victory—only for defeat. For although we can decide to stop fighting on our schedule, we cannot force the enemy to stop fighting on our schedule. Ratnesar is plain wrong in believing that a timetable for withdrawal is our best hope for victory. And I don’t even care about his level of sincerity.
I was going to go after his entire piece, but let me just focus on one. I’m one blogger and there is much idiocy out there to ridicule, after all. So here's his first debunking:
The trouble is, all three of Bush's arguments against a timetable are highly dubious. Take the first one: that setting a deadline would "send a message to the world that the United States is a weak and unreliable ally." Given that nearly every country whose troops remain in Iraq — including the U.K. — has signaled an intention to draw down or withraw their forces in 2006, it's hard to know which allies the President is talking about.
Ratnesar denies the claim by President Bush that setting a deadline divorced from victory would send a signal that we are a weak and unreliable ally. Ratnesar says that since all of our allies will draw down troops in Iraq in 2006, he does not understand who this signal would affect. Well no doubt Ratnesar can’t see this.
First of all, our allies in Iraq will withdraw from the quieter Shia regions in the south where we don’t even see a need to station troops to fight. As long as the Iraqis can hold that ground, the allied contingents are unneeded. They can leave before we do without damaging the war effort. Indeed, it is our strategy to turn over battlespace to the Iraqis in the easier areas first.
Second, and more importantly, the signal we should be worried about is to others in the future who might have to decide whether to fight with us or stand neutral. For example, if it comes to a fight with China over Taiwan, we might want a reputation for steadfast commitment to victory as we try to convince India, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan--and the Taiwanese for that matter--to fight with us. That a foreign policy writer cannot see beyond the Shia south of Iraq when determining effects is simply amazing.
In regard to our Iraqi allies, Ratnesar also states that a signal to withdraw would encourage the Shias and Kurds to take care of themselves, citing the recent Arab League-backed statement by Iraqi leaders that they want us to withdraw. If Ratnesar doesn’t know that this statement was just a cheap giveaway to the Sunnis by the Shias as a token concession—when the Shias actually count on us to stay until the Iraqi military is capable of fighting without us—he has no business analyzing foreign affairs for a major American newsmagazine.
The Time article is just an astoundingly dense piece.
