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Robert Parry, Consortium News, April 25, 2007

George W. Bush admits he has no evidence that a withdrawal timetable from Iraq would be harmful. Instead, the President told interviewer Charlie Rose that this core assumption behind his veto threat of a Democratic war appropriation bill is backed by “just logic.”

“I mean, you say we start moving troops out,” Bush said in the interview on April 24. “Don’t you think an enemy is going to wait and adjust based upon an announced timetable for withdrawal?”

It is an argument that Bush has made again and again over the past few years, that with a withdrawal timetable, the “enemy” would just “wait us out.” But the answer to Bush’s rhetorical question could be, “well, so what if they do?”

If Bush is right and a withdrawal timetable quiets Iraq down for the next year or so – a kind of de facto cease-fire – that could buy time for the Iraqis to begin the difficult process of reconciliation and start removing the irritants that have enflamed the violence.

One of those irritants has been the impression held by many Iraqi nationalists that Bush and his neoconservative advisers want to turn Iraq into a permanent colony while using its territory as a land-based aircraft carrier to pressure or attack other Muslim nations.

The neocons haven’t helped by referring to Bush’s 2003 conquest as the “USS Iraq” and joking about whether next to force “regime change” in Syria or Iran, with the punch-line, “Real men go to Tehran.”

By refusing to set an end date for the U.S. military occupation, Bush has fed this suspicion, prompting many Iraqis – both Sunni and Shiite – to attack American troops. Another negative consequence has been that the drawn-out Iraq War has bought time for foreign al-Qaeda terrorists to put down roots with Sunni insurgents.

Obviously, there is no guarantee that a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal would bring peace to Iraq. The greater likelihood remains that civil strife will continue for some years to come as Iraq’s factions nurse their grievances and push for a new national equilibrium.

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