http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080414/OPINION/804140313/1037/NEWS04The "benchmarks" for progress in Iraq that Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker described when they testified before Congress last year became "conditions" when the duo gave their update last week. Unlike the benchmarks, which were fairly specific, the conditions Petraeus and Crocker want to see met before a substantial number of U.S. troops can be withdrawn are unidentified moving targets.
Petraeus and Crocker refused to be pinned down by senators who were trying to flush out a definition for the conditions by firing questions that, while not overtly hostile, oozed impatience and frustration. In the end, what the general and the ambassador said is, "Give us more time. We're not going to tell you what the conditions are, but we'll tell you when they've been met."
As for the president, who says he's only doing what his commanders on the ground tell him to do, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got it right. "President Bush has an exit strategy for just one man - himself, on Jan. 20, 2009." Bush clearly intends to make the Iraq war and the nation's exhausted Army the next president's problem.
Proponents of the war are fond of pointing out that military solutions take time. The United States has kept troops in some nations, Germany, Japan and Korea, for example, for decades. But those who point to America's lasting deployments are only telling the self-serving part of the story. U.S. troops were not being killed or wounded on a daily or weekly basis in those places, nor were the expenses of occupation precluding necessary expenditures at home or exhausting the Army.
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