Prez: Let Operation Cut and Walk Commence

In a scripted speech given at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, on the subject of Iraq, the President confirmed that the United States will be withdrawing troops from Iraq to bring the number to 99,000 or less (100,000 being the magic “too many”) not less than 30 days before next November’s all-important Congressional mid-term elections. Of course the President promised there would be no artificial timetables for withdrawal; that’s why the timetable he laid out will be organic: naturally tied to the American political election cycle.
As usual, the expected babble-crap that oozed from the President’s lips (“We will stay the course!” “We will not cut and run!” “Dissent is treason!” “War is peace!” “Ignorance is strength!” “Freedom is slavery!”) drew polite applause from the assembled captive midshipmen. (The underclassmen, at least, have some hope that the President will be out of office by the time they graduate; the upper classmen, of course, expect to have no such luck.)
The fact of the matter is we have long ago achieved the officially stated pre-war goals (disarm Saddam’s Iraq, effect regime change, establish a democratic government, and maintain Saudi oil hegemony within OPEC by keeping Iraqi oil offline by completely undermining any sense of civil order within Iraq’s borders and by opening its borders to terrorists). The fact is, then, that we really have achieved the purportedly limited goals we set out to. The problem, of course, is that the supergeniuses who assumed we would be welcomed with flowers failed to comprehend that what we were, in fact, doing was creating a likely power vacuum in a very nasty part of the world. Worse… we were creating hundreds of thousands of blood grudges in a revenge-based society… a society where everyone was armed before we started… where we brilliantly made one of our first acts to fire thousands of soldiers and Iraqi civil servants out of some misguided ideology (and desire to… get this… save money.) So… we have opened up a big can of whoopass…
“The enemy”… mostly almost entirely former Baathists… will happily wait us out… or more likely, try to extend the status quo ad infinitum if they can. They know bloody well that once American forces leave, they will have to take on (Iranian-backed) Shiites seeking payback (the Shia death squads have already started; former Ambassador Negroponte has got to be proud) in an all out civil war … even at the risk of knowing that there will be a likely American response of carpet bombing urban areas, or shelling from offshore… with few if any soldiers and marines on the ground to act as targets anymore. So they have little to lose by keeping up their attacks… largely because it keeps us around… Most ironic and paradoxical: they know that continuing to attack American forces will likely lengthen our stay, as there remains (justifiable) fear of abandoning Iraq to the power vacuum (that we have created.) Let me repeat the irony here: by making life a living hell for American ground troops, and by forcing the right-wing to spout the “dissent is treason” line all over again (“we won’t cut and run” and similar horse-s***), the Baathists know that they are extending our presence in Iraq (because it’s simply not stable enough for us to leave.)
Is there a solution?
Of course there is! It’s… an artificial timetable for withdrawal… nothing at all like the 30-35% troop reduction over the next ten months (that will actually happen) of course. Nothing like that at all. Because Amurrkins don’t cut and run, no sirree.
NO. We’ll be having some troop redeployments, of course. But only because now the Iraqi units are fully trained and are able to assume the duties of securing their country’s future. Yes, that’s the ticket.