Time Horizons v. Timetables
July 21st, 2008 by Sarah
Late last week, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki and President Bush agreed to include a “time horizon” for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. According to a written statement by the White House Press Secretary, the negotiations include a “general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals,” including certain improvements on the ground.
Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reports that while the “White House offered no specifics about how far off any ‘time horizon’ would be… any dates cited in an agreement would be cast as goals for handing responsibility to Iraqis, and not specifically for reducing American troops.”
However, it seems as though the Iraqi leadership may have a different understanding of what “time horizon” means. Iraqi Parliament member Ali al-Adeeb said that ‘the Iraqi government considers the determination of a specific date for the withdrawal of foreign forces an important issue to deal with…I don’t know what the American side thinks, but we consider it the core of the subject.’”
Similarly, Dan Eggen and Michael Abramowitz in the Washington Post report that Maliki’s senior political advisor Sadiq Rikabi has stated that while negotiators were still working out the details, “the Iraqi government wants specific timelines governing different stages of what will eventually become a full U.S. withdrawal of combat forces.”
Dr. iRack at Abu Muqawama questions why the Iraqi leadership would agree to an ambiguous time horizon, if it ultimately wants a fixed timetable for a complete withdrawal. The blogger suggests that either al-Maliki was pressured by the Bush administration to agree to the more ambiguous language, or the Iraqi leadership actually wants the U.S. to remain in a supportive role, but is forced to appease the rising nationalist sentiment during the upcoming Iraqi election season.
Brian Ulrich at American Footprints agrees with Ezra Klein at the American Prospect that “fundamentally, Maliki’s comment [in Der Spiegel magazine] is evidence of what the Iraqi government sees as the primary impediment to their government attaining real legitimacy: Us. The American occupation is hugely unpopular, and if Iraq is to truly stabilize, its government needs to be seen as independent from the occupiers and opposed to their continued presence.”
Similarly, Adam Blickstein at Democracy Arsenal bluntly asks “isn’t the ‘aspirational goal’ for a majority of people in both the U.S. and Iraq to have American forces to leave?”
The Pan-Arab Daily (via Juan Cole) suggests, however, that the ambiguous language is in fact a compromise on Bush’s part, not al-Maliki’s.
But, Daniel Larison at The American Conservative disagrees. ”This is not really a shift, as the NYT would have it, so much as it is yet another rhetorical dodge. Officially, the administration has always wanted to leave Iraq as quickly as possible, and we all know that this claim is not credible.”
Posted in Iraq, Military |
