A Pilgrim’s Digression

Democrat Joe Lieberman has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that takes to task those Liberals and Moderates who increasingly support a withdraw from Iraq. Titled Our Troops Must Stay, Lieberman posits that a premature withdrawal (how I hate that phrase, with its sexual overtones) would sacrifice the 27 million Iraqis who desire freedom to the 10,000 terrorists who want civil war.

Lieberman is a bit too chummy with Sean Hannity for my taste—I probably would not vote for the man—but I like him, and I think he is forthright and genuine. However, I think his worries are misplaced and serve only to undermine the groundswell now forming for a withdrawal from Iraq within the next six months to a year.

I do not consider six months to a year to be a premature withdrawal. Really, that amount of time is all Representative John Murtha asked for last week. He did not call for the troops to be home by Christmas. He wants a six to twelve month time frame for the complete removal of American troops from Iraq. I think that is a reasonable time frame that is not at all hasty. Elections will be held in Iraq in just a few weeks, and if Iraq isn’t ready for self-governance and self-defense by summer 2006, I seriously doubt whether it will ever be ready to step out from under our protective wing.

As I listen to Republicans call for us to be resolute, as I read about Pentagon plans for a seven to ten year occupation, increasingly I wonder if our leadership seriously desires to ever leave Iraq. Maybe the left-wing kooks were right and our goal was always oil and occupation. If I am thinking in this way, it is reasonable that educated, moderate Iraqis must be wondering the same thing. There has to be an end to the occupation at some point soon, or we confirm to Iraqis and Muslims all across the world that we always had the worst of intentions in mind when we invaded. Not only is calling for a six to twelve month staged withdraw reasonable, I think knowing that the occupation will end would relieve much of the pressure and discord both in Iraq and here at home.

Additionally, there is considerable leeway in defining what it means to withdraw troops from Iraq. All along there have been indications that America means to maintain a permanent garrison in Iraq. Furthermore, Seymour Hersh has an article in this week’s New Yorker, titled Up in the Air, in which he writes that the Pentagon is preparing for a Kosovo-like air war in Iraq following the withdrawal of ground troops. In the opinion of Hersh and many of the officials and military men he has interviewed, an air campaign guided by Iraqis would be disastrous, considering the Iraqi penchant for exacting revenge (see also The New York Times today, Sunnis Accuse Iraqi Military of Kidnappings and Slayings).

So who is talking about a so-called “premature withdrawal,” other than Cindy Sheehan? Lieberman has swallowed the rhetoric of the Republican party, and now he is merely contributing his own exhalations of it to the American discourse. I guarantee Rush Limbaugh and others will be touting this editorial on their radio programs today, all the while disparaging John Murtha, a military man with far better credentials on the subject than Joe Lieberman. This is not helpful.