Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, July 19, 2008 2:32:52 PM
Here’s the exchange from Spiegel’s English translation, duly hyped by Reuters as tacit evidence of Liberal Jesus’s foreign-policy sagacity.
SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?
Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US
presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16
months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.
The unasked follow-up question: How about the 14-month timetable that Obama wanted to set in January 2007
to start pulling troops out before those positive developments could
occur? How keen does that look in hindsight? To repeat a point made yesterday, the only reason a timetable or “time horizon” is arguably a responsible strategy now is because it was properly rejected as being irresponsible then. Maliki hints at that in another part of the interview:
So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a
concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear
tantamount to an admission of defeat. But that isn’t the case at all.
If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias.
Exactly, which at least partly explains why Bush is more willing to
compromise now on some sort of informal schedule. Compare Maliki’s
justification for the timetable to Obama’s justification in his big Iraq speech.
The pacification of the country is almost incidental, something to
congratulate Petraeus on and then quickly move past. To the extent
conditions in Iraq seem to affect his rationale at all, he offers this:
“In the 18 months since the surge began, as I warned at the outset –
Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was
the purpose of the surge. They have not invested tens of billions of
dollars in oil revenues to rebuild their country. They have not
resolved their differences or shaped a new political compact.” I.e. it
didn’t work, so let’s get out. . . .
Update: A commenter notes that Spiegel has rewritten the
translation of the exchange about withdrawal to read as follows.
There’s nothing in the article calling attention to the change; they’re
trying to put one over on their readers, it seems.
SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?
Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S.
presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we
think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the
possibility of slight changes.
They’ve dropped the contingency about positive developments
continuing, although it’s still implied by the part about potentially
changing the plan. Did Maliki contact Spiegel and ask them to drop that
part so that the quote would sound more assertive back home? Hard to
believe the original translation would have been so off as to include a
bit about “positive developments” that he never said.