Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Immediate Withdrawal

I have no doubt that Wesley Clark is right when he suggests that an immediate withdrawal from Iraq could be a military catastrophe. But, I think there's a little disconnect about the meaning of "immediate withdrawal." Most people throwing around the phrase don't really think it means "turn tail and RUN RUN RUN AS FAST YOU CAN" out of Iraq. What they mean is we should set a timetable for getting out of Iraq as soon as we reasonably can. Certainly the meaning of the phrase "as soon as we reasonably can" is subject to debate, but I don't really think "getting out as fast as we can even if it means we incur massive casualties on the way out" is what anyone really has in mind.