It’s fun liberal exercise to think of all the little slogans that have come and gone since the Iraq invasion of 2003. I think one of the most interesting, because it seemed like an attempt to get away from slogans, was “when they stand up, we’ll stand down.”
Of course, that didn’t ever happen, and according to the AP, it’s not likely to happen any time soon.
Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, freestanding Iraqi army has seemed always to slip further into the future. In the latest shift, with Petraeus now U.S. commander in Iraq, the Pentagon’s new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when homegrown units will take over security responsibility nationwide, after last year’s reports had forecast a transition in 2008.
Earlier, in January last year, President Bush said Iraqi forces would take charge in all 18 Iraqi provinces by November 2007. Four months past that deadline, they control only half the 18.
There seems to be no penalty for the Iraqis to just sit on their asses and do nothing. I’ll tell you what, if I were them, I’d be tempted to do the same. As long as the people in charge have their political careers entirely staked in not leaving, why bother?
Good work, guys. Good work.
At one point I found myself wondering why there’s such a concern over the bitter battle being waged for the Democratic nomination. It’s not like these fights haven’t happened before. Look at Bush and McCain in 2000, and they’re pals now. Not like other’s haven’t been at each other’s throats in the past.
