After years of bitterly debating whether to set a timetable for troop withdrawals in Iraq, Congress has agreed to one.
The general consensus came Friday in the form of statements endorsing President Barack Obama's plan to bring home roughly two-thirds of the U.S. military force in Iraq by August 2010.
It was a compromise of sorts for the Democratic president, who campaigned on the promise of bringing every soldier and Marine home from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. His plan paves the way for some 100,000 troops to come home and as many as 50,000 troops to remain behind to train Iraqi forces and protect U.S. interests.
Not everyone was happy. Democratic leaders have suggested the 50,000 figure was too high and their more liberal rank-and-file swiftly rejected it. Republican leaders demanded assurances the plan would be abandoned if security conditions worsened. At least one hardline conservative cast the timeline as arbitrary and dangerous.
But in the end, the Congress that could never agree on how to win the Iraq war found common ground.
"President Obama's announcement of a withdrawal schedule for U.S. combat troops in Iraq is good news, because it signals that the war is coming to an end," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The idea that agreeing to withdrawal timeline after we've won is no different an achievement than agreeing to a timeline while the issue is in doubt is idiotic, but the basic assumption of the press these days. That minor detail of "victory" makes a huge difference, no? The very notion that the major disagreement was "how to win the Iraq war" is ludicrous.
Ultimately, the major compromise is that our liberal leaders have stopped insisting that we lose the war. You know, now that losing it would require a major effort and put the blame on them. The Left doesn't care, of course, and still wants to lose the war. Too bad, I hope.
But I will never forgive our national leaders who have simply wanted to "end" the war regardless of whether we won or lost that war. I have never trusted them with our national defense and still cannot trust them. I trust President Obama wants to win the war now that we've basically won it. I don't trust him on any other national security matter.
