Democrats should set 2008 Iraq deadline

In fifth year of this (conflict), another 18 months is enough.

http://www.startribune.com/561/story/1065681.html

The nation now begins its fifth burdensome year of the (conflict) in Iraq, with some
3,000 Minnesotans on the ground -- and most on extended tours -- fighting it. This is
the (conflict) that the Bush administration said would be quick, cheap and critical
to U.S. national security. It was not one of those things.

Now the administration wants the freedom to extend that war indefinitely. The U.S.
House is poised to say no, bring it to a rational, gradual close. We support that
House effort. It's past time for Congress to stop enabling an endless Iraq
occupation.

To a supplemental appropriation for Iraq, House Democrats have attached language that
would require the Iraqi government to meet the benchmarks President Bush said in
January were critical to success. If those benchmarks are met, U.S. troops would be
withdrawn by the fall of 2008. If the benchmarks are missed, their pullout would be
required by the end of this year.

War supporters protest that the Democrats' proposed timetable fails to give Bush's
new "surge" strategy a chance to work. How so? If the Iraqi government fails to meet
its benchmarks, the surge is guaranteed to fail in any event, and American soldiers
are better out of that country's sectarian strife. If the benchmarks are met, the
surge has 18 months to meet Bush's goal of giving the Iraq government a chance to
stand on its own feet. That's hardly akin to pulling the rug out from under Bush's
latest in a long line of Iraq strategies.

What war supporters may mean is what many counterinsurgency experts predict: That
Gen. David Petraeus can indeed make his counterinsurgency strategy work, but only if
he is given eight to 10 years. That's not a surge but a semipermanent occupation of
Iraq by American troops, and it's something the American people most likely would not
support if they were ever asked.

War supporters also protest that setting a time for an American withdrawal just
allows the insurgents to "wait us out." That's a very weak argument if you think it
through. Victory over the insurgents will never depend on their cooperation with our
timetable. It depends on the ability of the Iraqi government to gain enough strength
so that when the U.S. forces withdraw -- as they must -- that government can handle
whatever action the insurgents take. Either the Iraqi government can defeat the
insurgents or it can't. If it can't handle the job by the fall of 2008, it's unlikely
it ever will have that capacity.

War supporters also argue that the surge is working. Indeed, violence in Baghdad is
down -- although Sunday's toll of seven dead Americans wasn't heartening. But the
situation is akin to pouring police into a violent city neighborhood. Violence will
go down, so long as the extra police remain. But unless you propose to make the
neighborhood a permanent zone of occupation, something more fundamental must change.

In Baghdad, that "something" is an end to fighting between Sunnis and Shiites.
Numerous experts argue that the American presence is robbing the two groups of any
reason to stop fighting. Permanent peace in Baghdad will only come when Sunnis and
Shiites are forced to deal with each other, and that will come when they know the
Americans are going to leave.

That should be, at the latest, by fall of 2008. After four years of slogging through
one failed Bush administration strategy after another, giving this latest effort a
year and a half to work, as House Democrats propose, seems reasonable. Congress has a
responsibility to men and women in uniform at least as great as its responsibility
for the mess the administration has created in Iraq. The timetable and benchmark
requirements in the supplemental appropriation strike us as eminently fair and
sensible.