Exit Strategy

With their article in The Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol have done a good job of articulating Bush's exit strategy in Iraq:

What has also become clear this past week is that Bush is determined to promote democracy in Iraq--and right now. This is a significant step forward. Up until recently, senior Bush officials have tended to avoid using the word "democracy" to describe the goals of American policy. In the Pentagon and elsewhere it has been thought that this sets the bar too high and implies a lengthy American commitment to Iraq, a commitment of money, energy, and troops. The most urgent task, as Donald Rumsfeld and General John Abizaid have been inclined to see it, has been to bring the levels of U.S. forces in Iraq down and turn over the task of security to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. Others in the administration have adopted the familiar argument that the Iraqi people are not yet ready for democracy and have tried to push any real elections as far into the future as possible.

President Bush this week slammed the door on this kind of thinking. First, he set the bar for success high: democracy. The new plan for a handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis calls for regional caucuses to elect a transitional legislature by next May, with general elections planned for the end of 2005. We would prefer to see the elections moved up, but even under the current schedule Iraqis will have a chance to begin participating in democratic politics almost immediately. That is a giant step toward the goal and the commitment that Bush articulated this past week: The United States "will meet our responsibilities in Afghanistan and Iraq by finishing the work of democracy we have begun."

So much for exit strategies. Bush has made it clear that the only exit strategy from Iraq is a victory strategy, with victory defined as "democracy." "We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq and pay a bitter cost of casualties and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. We will help the Iraqi people establish a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East." That commitment may turn out to be the most important of Bush's presidency, perhaps the most important of the post-Cold War era.

Someone should give the article to Wesley Clark, who, along with others, has often said that Bush lacks an exit strategy:

Clark's most often-repeated charge against Bush, however, is that he has "no clear definition of success" in Iraq, "no international mandate, no integrated political-military strategy to win the peace and no exit strategy."