“Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror,” Donald Rumsfeld said in a famously leaked memo some 20 months ago, when America had barely heard of Howard Dean, and when the Iraqi insurgency was…well…, “in its last throes.”
In June of 2005, with the War in Iraq now over two years in, what are our metrics for declaring victory? As far as I can tell, the White House position is this: we’ll leave when the Iraqis are ready to defend themselves.
Leaving aside the obvious moral nebulousness of this question (Which Iraqis? Some of them already seem to be doing a bang-up job of defending themselves against… US), how will we know when they’re ready, without leaving them and seeing if they can fight? In other words, “We lack metrics.”
But is it even okay to ask for metrics? Christopher Hitchens says that If I even ask, then the terrorists have already won:
The outrage about the nondisclosures in the Downing Street memos has led Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina to demand that we tell the al-Qaida forces in Iraq exactly when we intend to give up.
Dude, seriously: chill. I’m not asking for a pullout date. Just a pullout metric.
Because getting those troops trained and in position is going to take at least another couple of years, at a total cost approaching half a billion dollars and several thousand American lives. We can argue forever about whether or not we knew that going in, but there’s no doubt that we know it now. So let’s be honest about the costs and the alternatives and set some clear goals.
Now Playing: Episode 366
Obama staffs up, Detroit comes to DC and finally, Iraq and the US come to a security agreement.
Links Mentioned: Iraq SOFA … pros and cons of a bailout.
Wow, what an awesome shirt! Why are you so angry?