When my kids were younger, and so was I, I taught each of them how to ride a bike. We'd go to the store, pick out a bike of the appropriate size, a helmet, some knee pads, a horn and a water bottle to clip under the ball buster. We'd bring it home, and I would spend an hour or two carefully assembling it, then storing the left over pieces in the garage for the next project.
Then I'd take my young child out into the street (we lived in a small cul de sac) and let them ride around for about an hour or so with the training wheels just to get their confidence up. Once they were comfortable with that, we'd sit on the curb together and remove the training wheels, while I told them how to ride with no training wheels.
Just to make sure they understood, I'd ride around the circle a couple of times so they could see how it was done.
Now at this point, I'd spent several hours of my time and effort teaching my children everything they needed to know about riding a bike, and it was time to go inside and watch Star Search, so I'd line 'em up in the street, and give them the hardest push I could and let go.
It was a real disappointment to me that none of them ever won the Tour d' France, but, hey, I did my part, right? If they didn't learn to ride fast enough, well, they had their shot.
Besides, think of all the money I saved on bicycles over the years!
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Now that would be a pretty pathetic thing to do to a kid, wouldn't it? I mean, an approach like that is just setting him or her up for failure, not to mention helping them acquire some brutally skinned knees, and a profound mistrust of the beneficence of all adults.
Kids learn to ride a bike on their own timetable, not ours. They learn gradually; acquiring new skills like balance and co-ordination takes time and patience. It can't be rushed.
So why does the left keep pushing for a timetable in Iraq? Some ex-governor was on the radio today saying we'd already spent 200 billion and we're gonna spend another 280 billion, and we need to have an endpoint in sight, or some such drivel. Dennis Kucinich and Neil Abercrombie had a piece in the USA Today a couple of days ago saying precisely the same thing, perhaps signaling a new co-coordinated push to try and get us out of Iraq prematurely. The last thing the left needs is for US policy to continue succeeding in the Middle East; it could very well render them irrelevant for the next several decades.
So, since disaster doesn't appear to be in the cards as long as we continue to stay the course, obviously, they must begin to push as hard as they can to get us to leave before the job is done. Like the parent who would sling his kid out into the street unprepared for riding the bike, these folks want us to abandon the Iraqis before they're ready, a goal that can only result in massive bloodshed that they will then turn and blame on the Bush administration.
What a bunch of cynical bastards! Who cares how many Iraqi's die as long as there's a (D) after the next President's name!
I know, I know, I'm being awfully harsh, but damnit, it's true! Think about it; everyone knows we are in a war of attrition. The terrorists cannot win in a straight up fight against us; hell, they can't even win a straight up fight against the Iraqi Army. That's why they're taking out soft targets like restaurants, shopping centers, and the like. Their goal is to get us to leave before they're all dead, and before the Iraqi government is ready to stand on it's own.
That's the only way they can win.
So here comes some left wing lunatic saying we ought to give these guys a hard time limit; a goal for them to shoot for. It's like telling the terrorists "If you can hold out 'till next December 31 at 1201 AM, we'll be outta here and you can play "Fall of Saigon" all you want to. Hell, you can even take a few more pot shots at American helicopters as they evacuate, leaving the helpless Shiites and Kurds behind. We'll even supply the press coverage so all of the Muslim world will see the US turn tail and run."
That is precisely how a terrorist sees a hard timeline, and anybody with an ounce of intelligence knows it. Dennis Kucinich is either unbelievably stupid or undeniably rotten as he plots to profit from unequalled bloodshed, and that disgusts me.
If you simply must have a definitive timeline, if your mind is so inflexible that you cannot handle the real world adjustments that must be made in any undertaking as complex as this one, then at least make it event driven, rather than calendar driven. Set up metrics for Iraqi self rule, and as they meet those metrics, reduce the US presence. As the Iraqis continue to gain experience and knowledge, shift the load onto them, slowly but surely. Eventually, just like my kids, who by the way, all ride bikes very well thank you very much, the Iraqis will make their own transition to power.
By their timetable; not ours.