31 Comments

1. Ben:

I always thought our exit strategy should be this: First we win, then we leave. Constantly talking about exit strategies independent of victory is another expression for defeatism.

Jan 23, 2005 - 2:20 pm 2. chuck:

Makes me wonder what the exit strategy for Bosnia and Kosovo is. I didn’t think there was one at the time and anyone of sense knew that Clinton’s promises were just so much fan dancing. I wish the Democrats would stop playing politics and actually try to accomplish something for this country.

Jan 23, 2005 - 2:24 pm 3. Yehudit:

Does anyone really think we’re going to leave?

We’re going to establish permanent bases as in Western Europe after WWII. Then we needed to keep an eye on the Soviets, now we need to keep an eye on the Arabs and Central Asia.

Jan 23, 2005 - 2:58 pm 4. Ben:

We may or may establish permanent bases Yehudit, depending upon future need and whether the Iraqis agree to play the host. If it is necessary to have permanent bases, then there’s really no other way around it.

Jan 23, 2005 - 3:01 pm 5. Terrye:

chuck has a point. If I remember correctly Clinton said we would be out of Bosnia and Kosovo in a year.

yeah right. They also don’t have a functioning government or a decent power grid. But what they hey, that’s all in the past. Time to move on to new countires to bitch about it.

I think we will draw down troops asap and I am not sure if we will leave a base there or not, after all we have one in Kuwait and they are right next door.

Juan was all huffy about this on Fox Sunday today. Bitch bitch bitch.

And what is this crap Biden came up with that only 4,000 Iraqi security have been trained? Rice says 120,000. That is a huge difference. I wonder what level of security Biden is talking about? I bet there are more than 4,000 police in Baghdad alone.

Jan 23, 2005 - 3:26 pm 6. JorgXMcKie:

The MSM shows that 23 people had been killed in Baltimore during the first 21 days of the year. What is our exit strategy there? Should we just pull up the police and all the administrators and streets and san staff, etc and go home?

As for Joe “the Plagiarist” Biden, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, et al, why use facts when it’s easier to make up stuff to support what you laughingly believe to be an argument? Saves time, money, staff, thought . . . Well, you get the point.

Jan 23, 2005 - 3:45 pm 7. ambisinistral:

The Exit Strategy schtick is just another variation on the ol’ “Have you stopped beating your wife” bit. The implication of having an Exit Strategy is that the war is lost and we need to get out with the least number of further losses. After all, what winner plots an exit strategy? Tautology through and through.

Jan 23, 2005 - 3:59 pm 8. Jim Rockford:

The problem this “exit strategy” underlines is the hold the mutant version of the Powell Doctrine has on the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The “old” circa 1991 Powell Doctrine relied on: a. overwhelming domestic political support; b. a clear military objective; c. a clear timetable for the end of military action; and d. an “exit strategy.”

This in reaction to the Vietnam War, where the Pentagon felt used by a White House that failed to define their military objective or rally domestic support.

The “new” Powell Doctrine relies on: a. unanamous domestic AND foreign political support; b. a clear and limited military objective; c. a rigid timetable for the end of military action; and d. an “exit strategy” leading to the end of US involvement in less than two years.

This is a recipe for inaction, which is exactly what the Democratic Party wants, leaving military action to “bomb and forget” episodes like Sudan. Dems have already complained that the War on Terror has consumed resources and attention that could be and should be better focused at home, and erodes civil liberties. Beinart’s article about a “Fighting Faith” that links the efforts to secure our country abroad by fighting tyrannies that threaten us with reform at home seems sensible; however it would threaten sacred cows within the Party which is why Bush and the Reps will act without any serious audit or alternative.

Sacred Cows? 1. Boots on the ground and US Servicemen dying is evil, no matter what; 2. Guerrilla warfare can NEVER be won; 3. Military force is useless and self-defeating, negotiations and/or sanctions work better; 4. There is no evil (save the US Gov’t), only misunderstood or oppressed peoples/leaders; 5. Our security problems stem from people/regimes/organizations being “angry with us” rather than not fearing consequences of attacking us.

Sadly, the Party is just not serious about putting these sacred cows out to pasture.

Jan 23, 2005 - 4:11 pm 9. charlotte:

It’s obvious. We’ll exit stage Right! When and how depends on how it all goes.

My guess is that, in recognition of the major Iraqi election to happen early next year and IF this year goes fairly well, we’ll try to pull out many of our troops by the end of this year and set up a quick reaction force somewhere there, while also leaving a fairly high number of “advisors” with the Iraqi forces to stiffen them up for the next several years.

Jan 23, 2005 - 4:32 pm 10. PJ:

“Exit strategy” — euphemism for “surrender.”

Let’s hope Bush resists.

Jan 23, 2005 - 5:31 pm 11. richard mcenroe:

Jim Rockford ó Correction: Boots on the ground and US Servicemen dying is evil, no matter what when the US might possibly benefit from it…

Jan 23, 2005 - 5:36 pm 12. Charlie (Colorado):

Whatever the reason, the sight of an old Klansman blocking a little colored girl from Birmingham from getting into her office contributed to the general retro vibe that hangs around the Democratic Party these days. Even “Eve Of Destruction,” one notes, is a 40-year-old hippie dirge.

Just in case you haven’t followed the Steyn link yet. Plus I loved the line too much not to repeat it.

Jan 23, 2005 - 5:39 pm 13. Charlie (Colorado):

chuck has a point. If I remember correctly Clinton said we would be out of Bosnia and Kosovo in a year.

yeah right. They also don’t have a functioning government or a decent power grid. But what they hey, that’s all in the past. Time to move on to new countires to bitch about it.

To be fair to Clinton, Bush doesn’t have the UN’s help with peacekeeping. Clinton was starting with a major disadvantage.

Jan 23, 2005 - 5:41 pm 14. richard mcenroe:

Charlie(Colorado) _ Well, whose fault was that? Heck, Clinton lived among the yurpeens, like Jane Goodall with her apes. He should have known better…

Jan 23, 2005 - 5:47 pm 15. chuck:

However, looks like it may be time to leave Sumatra: link.

Jan 23, 2005 - 6:38 pm 16. Charlie (Colorado):

Oh, Richard, don’t go ruining my anti-UN insults by being logical.

Jan 23, 2005 - 7:03 pm 17. Terrye:

Well one of two things will happen Republicans will win or Democrats will win and then they will have to continue on with the fight or risk the wrath of the American people if it turns out there really is a problem and they failed to deal with it.

Do any of us believe that if Gore had won in 2000, Atta and his crew would not have struck?

The terrorists are not into partisan politics, they just want to kill Americans.

Jan 23, 2005 - 7:24 pm 18. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

The Democrats and the left are in a bizarre position. You can see this on leftist sites (like marccooper.com) where they are trying to figure out what to do.

Objectively, they benefit when the country suffers losses overseas. That they take advantage of this is disgusting and in fact is one of the weaknesses of democracy in the modern age.

Our opponents know this. They also know that eventually the American people will tire of fighting if no very visible threat re-appears. They are planning on waiting us out, just like the North Vietnamese did after Tet 1968 when they realized the value of winning the war in the US political process.

In that sense, war opponents who do not offer a serious victory alternative are, for their partisan goals, aiding the enemy. And the enemy knows this if som eof these Useful Idiots do not.

chuck posted this link in a different thread. I think it is well worth reading in terms of understanding the war on terror (as opposed to the Iraqi Baathist insurgency, a battle in one theatre of the war).

This time, somehow, we must prevent the MSM and the Democrats from snatching a quick defeat from the jaws of a slow victory. There is too much at stake.

The myths that need to be destroyed include the idea that Europe is in any way useful in this war (other than at the spook level); that Europe and Russia are anything other than supporters of our enemies in Iraq and Iran; that guerilla wars cannot be won; that an attack on Syria is wrong and represents a failure of our strategy; that terrorism “root causes” mean anything; that the Democrats have a better answer or any demonstrated capability to fight a war; that this is a multifaceted war (the article above addresses a good viewpoint on that) which has unique characteristics and remarkably dangerous threats; that profiling is a bad idea; the myth that Islam is just another religion in the case of all of its inherents, and instead instill the idea that interpretations of Islam have created an exceedingly dangerous fantasy that glorifies suicide and will (in both a fantasy and practical sense) require escalating attacks against up.

In other words, most people know little about this war and the Democrats are cynically taking advantage for this and seriously endangering the country by doing so (and the MSM is even worse).

Jan 23, 2005 - 9:22 pm 19. Patrick Tyson:

In the column linked, it seems to me Steyn is as petty and, at least in one case, as idiotic as his foes.

The idiotic:

…what matters is that the president has repudiated the failed “realism” that showers billions on a friendly dictator like Egypt’s Mubarak and is then surprised when one of his subjects flies a passenger jet into the World Trade Center.

Way back in 2003 I posted a comment here in response to this speech and this topic.

The relevant part of my comment:

I acknowledged, in passing, that the Bush speech on Thursday was a fine speech, but that it could have been an important speech had he given it last November. In the wake of the Iraq war and occupation, most of the world will see it as an attempt to change the subject. Of course he could follow through and advocate, for instance, withholding the annual aid to Egypt and/or suspending most favored nation trade status to all the non-democratic nations he named. I won’t hold my breath.

This Robert Kagan column is the realistic take on the effects of the Inaugural Address.

Jan 23, 2005 - 10:53 pm 20. chuck:

Patrick,

At this point it is unrealistic to say what is realistic. Time will tell.

Jan 23, 2005 - 11:04 pm 21. jill bryant:

Yeah, exit strategy – who would plan for that? (Funny, I thought Bush administration had talked about us getting out of there but that must be something else.) Now what are we going to do about getting that old enlistment up since we aren’t going to exit and the stop/losses are going to run out? Can we pay them a heck of a lot more – we’re already so deeply into costs what difference does it make – what is it $151b?

I thought we were going to stay there. We were told before we got in there that it would take about 15 years to reach stability but we were also told to use more troops so it’s been kind of confusing who to believe. And, I also thought we were supposed to have a plan for peace but that seemed to have gotten garbled too. Why would we dream about talking exit strategy.

And it’s great that we can now dis the UN because without the US behind it, we know it will fall apart and instead of using the power of the US to try to improve a flawed system, let’s use our power to take it down and work with other nations using – I know Webex!! That on-line conferencing thing will be good. Or, are we completely going it alone. Is that what we want to do now? Just trying to keep up with the new America (everything changed after 9/11. Before that our enemies varied from kamikazes, those who raped women with bayonets — they set up elaborate methods to sanitize mass murder, they had nuclear weapons, they used women and children to fight soldiers…it’s all changed.)

Jan 24, 2005 - 2:04 am 22. xutag77:

Ask the Democarats what the exit strategy is for the War on Poverty or affermative action!!

Jan 24, 2005 - 4:02 am 23. Terrye:

jill:

We just brought troops off the DMZ for the first time in a half century. We still have a base in Okinawa. We have bases in Eruope. What is our exit strategy from WW2 and the Cold War?

Tell me, did anyone ask Bill Clinton what the exit strategy was when he said we should remove Saddam from power back in 1998? They just thought oh well Bill is blowing off again and ignored it. But he wasn’t. The Iraqi Liberation ACt and Operation Desert Fox along with UN Resolution 1441 and a boken cease fire agreement helped get us here. Our presence in Iraq is actually under UN resolution right now and it states we will leave either when the objectives of stabilizing that country are met or when the sovereign government of Iraq ask us to.

I tell you what, let’s just tell the mullahs and the terrorists exactly when we plan to leave so that they can sit back with their thumbs up their butts, wait for the happy day and then start killing people again.

Jan 24, 2005 - 6:20 am 24. Terrye:

jill:

And by the way, the military is meeting enlistment standards. There is a problem with the reserve and national guard numbers, but moves are being made to shore that up. The sign up is being increased to $15,000. And I don’t think anyone would argue with increasing the death benefit. It is the military, if you join chances are you will get shot at. Soldiers today have a better chance of making it home in one piece than they did a generation ago. We have lost 1300 men in Iraq. We lost 49,500 at Okinawa alone.

If I remember correctly Kerry said he planned to increase our military by 40,000 and still intends to bring that up for a vote. So it seems there is evidence that if the Pentagon needs more people they can get them. Otherwise why would Kerry want to increase an army if we can’t get people to join up to meet present requirements?

Jan 24, 2005 - 6:26 am 25. Charlie Quidnunc:

Roger,

I liked the post today. I read your comments into my Podcast today, as well as those of Little Green Footballs, the Corner, PowerLine and a few others. Listen if you have time. Go for a walk in the park and get your 10 minutes of bloggers each day.

Charlie.

Roger L. Simon liked this part:

As is so often the case, Mark Steyn has this week’s mots justes:

The Democrats’ big phrase is “exit strategy.” Time and again, their senators demanded that Rice tell ‘em what the “exit strategy” for Iraq was. The correct answer is: There isn’t one, and there shouldn’t be one, and it’s a dumb expression.

Jan 24, 2005 - 7:23 am 26. richard mcenroe:

Fortunately, the Democrats seem to have devised an excellent exit strategy for getting out of American politics…

Jan 24, 2005 - 8:13 am 27. Dilys:

I believe exit strategy used this way is a venture-capitalist term of art heard in VC conferences in the 90’s.

That is, it reflects an enterprise created to exploit for ["my"] benefit and then flip to someone else’s responsibility as soon as possible. The product or contribution is irrelevant, it’s just an economic marker with a trajectory into my pocket. The cynical edge of the capitalist conceptual continuum.

Soooo… Is it in values terms surprising that the elite-oriented Dems have picked up that idea to beat up on Bush’s policy by any means possible; and that it hasn’t entered the Administration thinking in those terms?

Jan 24, 2005 - 8:44 am 28. PJ:

Jill,

I don’t want to pile on, but what do you mean by “exit strategy”? It’s like talking about a due date for a library book. WWII didn’t have an exit strategy; we stayed until Europe and Japan were pacified and we are actually still there (although for different reasons than originally set out– oops, changing strategies again, our bad.)

I share your concern about the UN. But if this group of unchecked, unbalanced, free spending bureaucrats were in the US Congress, the voters would demand it be fixed or that a few people go to jail. The cry of horror “Halliburton” should also include “and the UN.”

Jan 24, 2005 - 8:48 am 29. Sandy P:

“Exit strategy” is a defeatist phrase.

When I run across it in the blogosphere, I just say I’m still waiting to leave German and Korea.

Jan 24, 2005 - 11:10 am 30. Kevin P:

Jill:

The reason the Bush is not trying at this moment to”fix” the UN from within is because it is structurally set up to frustrate reform and maintain the staus qou. Take for example the UN effort to define terrorism. The basic definition that the intentional targeting of civilians and non-combatants should be called terror. Now this doesn’t mean the accidental death of civilians in military actions but if the intentional targeting of innocent civilians, this would include kidnapping,suicide attacks of non-military targets, . This would exclude unintentional deaths because as nasty as this sounds war is not possible without the poorly named collateral damage. But one would think that if you bomb a maternity ward at a hospital even the UN could be able to call this terrorism. But not this ossified institution. The Arab block has stopped any definition that includes specifically targeted non-combatants and there is no way to get anything passed, or if something eventually is passed it will be so vague as to be useless.

This is the institution that has countries with vitually no human rights sitting on the groups that moniter human rights. The only possible way that it will be reformed is to bypass it at this moment till the UN realizes it is becoming obsolete and must change if it wants to continue doing business. It could take 30 to 40 years to reform it from within and the World cannot wait that long. They know that any US President is only in office for 8 years and they would just wait out any concerted internal shake up. As corrupt as I think it is I don’t advocate the US dropping out. I think a combination of going outside the UN for international action and the Reagan method of threatening withdrawl of funding will do more to get this bloated institution to take up reform then any internal effort led by the US.

Jan 24, 2005 - 11:31 am 31. charlotte:

Isn’t “exit strategy” the antonym of “quagmire”? That’s what I was taught in the late 60s and 70s since Nam. Brings back memories of being a seventh grader who debated the resolution that the Congress should prohibit our unilateral military intervention in foreign countries.

We all know now that US wars should happen, preferably, with “antiseptic” air power alone and certainly with all ends tied up tidily in a few weeks or months at most, and with everybody happy and contented, especially the anti-American Europeans, US Dem/doves, and also our murderous but misunderstood “enemies”. Else it’s a quagmire

unless, the UN is involved, and then no “exit strategy” need be applied, since peacekeeping and administration duties constitute a perennial job welfare program for UN/EU bureaucrats, and blue helmets need to enjoy their local “fun” and profit, too. (Run, girls.)

Jan 24, 2005 - 2:30 pm

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