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Well, certainly not while this President is still in office; he has stated it will not. And, while the process will start in 2008 with a new President, it will take at least a year to get completely out. So, my prediction is 2009. Unless someone like John McCain is elected, then figure another 4 years, or until we are seriously attacked again (which should be due about 2009, because it was about 8 years between World Trade Center attacks). If we are attacked, it will point out the absolute insanity and failure of our present policies, and the cry to change those policies will finally be overwhelming.
I guess the real queston is not when the war will end, but when we plan on pulling out? Because the war will continue long after we're gone and until the host government is firmly intact, police and troops are adequately trained, etc. - still no guarantee who the final victor will be.
If we're not going to be there indefinitely, why are we building permanent military bases?. Bush has now compared Iraq to our 50+ years presence in Korea. The Slate article points out the differences between Iraq and Korea.
WASHINGTON, June 2 — For the first time, the Bush administration is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come, a subject so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States’ long-term mission would be there.
President Bush has long talked about the need to maintain an American military presence in the region, without saying exactly where. Several visitors to the White House say that in private, he has sounded intrigued by what he calls the “Korea model,†a reference to the large American presence in South Korea for the 54 years since the armistice that ended open hostilities between North and South.
But it was not until Wednesday that Mr. Bush’s spokesman, Tony Snow, publicly reached for the Korea example in talking about Iraq — setting off an analogy war between the White House and critics who charged that the administration was again disconnected from the realities of Iraq. He said Korea was one way to think about how America’s mission could evolve into an “over-the-horizon support role,†whenever American troops are no longer patrolling the streets of Baghdad.
The next day, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also mentioned Korea, saying that establishing a long-term American garrison there was a lot smarter than the handling of Vietnam, “where we just left lock, stock and barrel.†He added that “the idea is more a model of a mutually agreed arrangement whereby we have a long and enduring presence but under the consent of both parties and under certain conditions.â€
on would be very different — making sure that Al Qaeda doesn’t turn Iraq into a base the way it turned Afghanistan into one.â€
A long-term presence is envisioned by many experts, and it has been raised as a possibility by the Baker-Hamilton Commission, whose report on Iraq has now been embraced by President Bush — five months after he all but dismissed its conclusions. But the problem, as one senior administration official acknowledged last week, is that there is little reason to believe that American bases will stop Iraq from being “the great jihadist training camp it is today.â€
As in Korea, the bases may be an effort to prevent calamity and invasion. The question is whether, in the firestorm of Iraq, their contribution to security would outweigh their roles as symbols of occupation or targets of terrorism.
Most of our troops will be out in the next couple of years. But the war will go on in one form or another for hundreds of years. Whether we keep some sort of peace keeping force there like we have in Korea will depend on who wins the next presidential election.
Well, certainly not while this President is still in office; he has stated it will not. And, while the process will start in 2008 with a new President, it will take at least a year to get completely out. So, my prediction is 2009. Unless someone like John McCain is elected, then figure another 4 years, or until we are seriously attacked again (which should be due about 2009, because it was about 8 years between World Trade Center attacks). If we are attacked, it will point out the absolute insanity and failure of our present policies, and the cry to change those policies will finally be overwhelming.
We do not have troops patrolling the streets in Korea.
Notice they do not really talk about training the Police and Troops anymore in Iraq? It is a lost cause. The troops are just waiting for a STRONG MAN like SADAMM to take over. Only then will there be an end to the war.
We will be in the Middle East so long as the Saudi Royal Family need us to protect them from the real tide of representative government in the area continues to threaten the monarchy. Or so the Republicans envision.
It would be foolish for us to keep troops in Iraq for decades the way we have in the ROK. If we do it will drag this conflict out for AT LEAST a generation or two. We just need to admit we screwed up, pull our troops out, bring them home, and put them on our porous border so the terrorists can't just walk in anytime they want.
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