Several major Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups recently offered an immediate halt to all attacks against Coalition forces IF the U.S. agrees to a timetable that would result in all foreign troops leaving Iraq by 2008. Sound like anyone else you’ve heard from recently? Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for the press to make that connection.
Taken together with the other demands, the “offer” is actually a bid for capitulation on the part of the Coalition and the new Iraqi government, who would be agreeing to legitimize these Baathist reactionaries and effectively return them to their previous dominance. Under normal circumstances such outrageous demands would have been dismissed out of hand—and the Sunni insurgents aren’t exactly negotiating from a position of power at the moment.
Instead, our own deplorably irresolute posture of late has presented them with an opportunity to take the strategic initiative by cleverly camouflaging their most sinister demands with the language of “peace and stability in exchange for withdrawal,” mostly for the benefit of the Western press. Don’t let anyone tell you that these guys aren’t politically savvy.
Now we get to sit back and be dismayed by how many of our own “statesmen” take the offer seriously.
