Lemme see if I have this straight, too.
The Democrat opposition to President Bush's handling of the war boils down to...
1. We left Afghanistan too early, leaving the Taliban bent, but not broken, so now they are reorganizing and causing trouble. We should have stayed longer, rather than leave the Afghans to muddle out self-governance themselves, after all, they haven't had much practice.
2. We've stayed in Iraq too long, and used too many troops who should be elsewhere fighting terrorists, and we should leave the Iraqis to muddle out self-governance themselves (though it has been some time since they've had any real practice...).
3. The troops are too tired and the Army too broken to fight, but if they weren't in Iraq, they could be somewhere else fighting terrorists, which presumably means deployed to other countries, since the only terrorist attacks near military installations in the US have been the Phelps Phamily annoying people at military funerals. But, I guess there would be fewer of them doing that overseas... so there is *some coherence* there.
And of course these countries can just jump on the self-governance bandwagon!
Just look at us... we did it overnight! Not. It took sitting on Japan and Germany a good 10 years (with a lingering presence for decades after) to get them realigned and moving on.
Where else have we seen this quick reaction... I know, lets check in on a Democrat-inspired nation-building exercise... the Balkans. I think Bill covered that pretty well, let's rummage in the comments a coupla posts below.
*rummage, rummage* Ah! Here we go! Bill opined thusly at 8-ish yesterday morning:
In 1998 (three years after the Dayton Accords), Bosnia-Herzegovina was still severely factionalized, but there was reluctant official cooperation between the Serbs, the Bosniaks (Muslims), the Croats, the Bosnian Serbs, the Serbian Muslims and the Bosnian Croats. The various ethnic groups still hated each other's guts (and made no excuses for it), but everyone was pretty much sick of the killing.By 2001, the cooperation was well-established and the various factions were at least working together actively, albeit not happily. The various ethnic groups drifted from active hatred into grudging acceptance of each other's right not to be summarily shot.
These days, the politicians in BiH are still squabbling, but at least they're doing it within the framework of a constitution. The various ethnic groups are now only mildly annoyed with each other and are willing to settle differences with a ballot rather than a bullet.
I'd say Iraq, three years after the war, is midway between Boz's 1998-2001 progress, and the Army's even further up the road.
Extrapolate from the Balkan timeline above and apply it to SWA and that should yield a fairly accurate timetable for a US withdrawal, Mr. Congressman.
Ummmm, what's that? You say we've still got troops in the Balkans?
Heh. Yeah, I know...
*wadding timeline and tossing a 3-point sinker*
Ry made the observation that it takes time to build an Army and other Security Forces. Especially ones that don't have "strong NCO" traditions. Oddly enough, Bill had a post that discussed that, too, in June of this year.
Update: I see I'm slow to this... Jeff at Protein Wisdom knocked this apart before I did. Great minds, etc.
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