Informed Speculation

Russ Feingold, whom I’ve yet to profile (I’ve got no excuses now that I’ve made the move and will profile none other than Mr. Feingold this weekend, time permitting), is making a move that, while it may play well with the Kossacks, is, from a national security standpoint, a disaster. What Feingold is proposing, in a nutshell, is that we show our cards to the terrorists, and encourage more and deadlier attacks. How so? By proposing a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq of December 31, 2006.

Of course, after nailing a date, he immediately starts dancing:

While Feingold is proposing a deadline for American troop withdrawal, he says it can be a flexible deadline.

“It’s a target date,” he said. “If we believe we need a little more time we may have to continue [in Iraq].

Feingold outline three possibilities:

“One, we achieve our goals in the timeframe and we are able to bring our troops home. “Two, we make progress but not quite as fast as hoped and we might need flexibility. Or three, things might get much worse and we might decide that we simply can’t achieve our goals. But at least a time frame measures how we are doing.”

Yes, well, and we could keep all three of those options open, and even internally, secretly, set a deadline, WITHOUT TELLING THE BAD GUYS OUR FUTURE PLANS. A radical idea, I know…

As an aside, for a little perspective: we deposed Hussein 2 years ago; UN troops are STILL in Kosovo…the moral? These things take time (with the hat tip to AJStrata)…