Cut and Walk: A Plan to Exit Iraq

CUT AND WALK: A PLAN TO EXIT IRAQ

Kenneth L. Hacker

December 11, 2006

Two main frames for the war in Iraq have been the White House frame, denied or not, of Stay the Course, and the alleged frame of war protestors known as Cut and Run. Of course, there are other optional frames such as the four options outlines in recent and serious news accounts of the war such as the Stay and Train frame. I offer another frame here which I simply call Cut and Walk.

Cut and Walk means leave (gracefully or not) as soon as possible at a scalable rate and walk rather than run from the chaos. Cut and Walk also means deploy air and naval power as needed to reinforce what has been accomplished by ground forces.

What are the four other options mentioned above? Are there policiticians still trying to reduce the issues to support the president or support terrorism?

Bush is acting coy in relation to the Iraq Study Group report. He was caught and the books Fiacos, The One Percent Formula, and State of Denial are suddenly freed from charges of being too radical or too harsh.

Tom Delay, opining on TV talk shows instead of serving prison time, argues that "there are bad people in the world that want to hurt America." Wow...

Let us get back to reality. The White House leaders are meeting with numerous experts to discuss the Baker-Hamilton report and recommendations. This will likely go on until the White House figures out a way to release its own plan on shifting how the war is framed. With the neocons increasingly being shown the door, more realists appear to be welcome. This does not guarantee that realist policies will be taken more seriously that the neocon fantasies. Still, we can hope for more reason.

Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon this week announced that how was ending his suport of the Bush adminstration policy on Iraq. Fox News Republican commentators debated the failing nature of what is going on in Iraq today. Fred Barnes said that many Republicans do not want to defend the war and that Sen. Sam Brownback bailed out while saying he was not bailing out. They talked about how there needs to be more signs of civility in Iraq for Bush to recover on the war. Mort Kondrake noted that some analysts are advocating an "80% policy" where the U.S. tilts toward the Shiites.

Bush is getting ready to deliver a major speech on Iraq to the American public. Lee Hamilton argues that training is the best way forward and Bush may take off on this theme because he can argue that this was a goal all along and therefore admit no flaws in his policies.

The Iraq Study Group gave Bush a new frame if nothing else - "A New Way Forward."