Any thoughts on Pentagon release (US will stay in Iraq until at least 2010)?

It’s up to Obama. Let’s see if he keeps his word or lied like a politician.

No one should be surprised. The President sets the agenda (based on the advice of commanders on the ground). Obama, the Iraqi government AND even Bush Administration officials pretty much agreed a couple months back on a 16 month timetable to withdraw all combat forces. Obama is inaugurated in 2009, 16 months sure seems like 2010 to me. Where’s the controversy.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if 2010 comes and goes and we are still in Iraq. Announcing certain dates for things to happen can sound promising but there is just way too much uncertainty going on in the world right now (much of it in the Middle East and South East Asia) to put much faith in what the Pentagon says will transpire in the next couple of years. Many things can happen between now and then but I for one, being a military member, earnestly hope that we are out of Iraq for good by the year 2010.

Oh yes, and a note on the 16 month timetable….another thing Obama did very specifically is to avoid promising that it was 16 months no matter what. He said “we have to be as careful getting out as we were careless going in” for one thing, and for another, he said that of course any timetable has to take into account actual conditions on the ground. That’s all you can do, is look at the situation, make a good faith estimate based on the things you know, and push forth with that plan in hopes that any adjustments that have to be made to it do not completely undermine the entire plan. I don’t feel we should have EVER gone into Iraq, and I want to see us get out as quickly as humanly possible, but given that we have created an unstable environment which has fostered an influx of terrorists, I think we need to recognize that as much as those of us who never wanted to be there in the first place, we still have to get out the right way. The right way being a way that does not destabilize the country and leave it more dangerous than how we found it. That’s just common sense, and even though I think you’d have to be blind not to realize that, none of the 20 other Presidential candidates really seemed to get that.

It’s a tough question. My response comes from someone who is a believer in peace, economic development is (infrastructure building, opportunity building) a better pathway towards conflict resolution than armies and death. It is sustainable and gets to the root of the problem. But, we made a mess, and if we leave cold turkey, who knows what will happen to Iraqis. I would prefer we take out the armies and replace them with engineers and the like, but we wont. So we are stuck with military or no military. Look at what happened to Afghanistan, we left there, and the country has fallen to pieces – you can’t take out a government and not provide support to the people while they try to rebuild. We need to continue to providing support. Ideally it shouldn’t come in the form of an army of young boys who have no idea what they are doing, but realistically it is all that we have.

Is the Pentagon reading Fluther again? ~