President Bush has agreed to set a nebulous “time horizon” to(as he said) “cut and run.” Bush agreed to(as he once said) “raise the white flag of surrender” in the wake of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s statement that he wanted to see American troops leave Iraq. This is in sharp contrast to the Bush administration’s previous opposition to Democratic plans to begin to leave Iraq. In fact, the Bush administration still opposes the more specific plans proposed by the Democrats. They argue that the difference between the plans is that Democratic party’s plan is an arbitrary time table while the new Bush plan is a “time horizon” based on what’s happening on the ground. This of course ignores the fact that the reason the Democratic party and Barack Obama support a careful timeline based on events on the ground is that the war has been failing.
The Bush administration’s justification for their pivit is that the Surge has worked. This of course is false because the objective of the Surge was to bring about political reconciliation. Instead the Kurds have walked out of the parliament and that Baath Party members are still not able to fully participate in the government. In other words, the Surge brought about security gains, but failed to meet its objective.
