This is not a bad plan at all. Of course, some in both parties are still complaining about Bush not having a plan, but I think this is a plan, an excellent plan: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html
We're still stuck. Frankly, I don't see what else the President COULD have said. But there are problems... 1) What the plan actually requires is that Iraq have a government and society of which WE approve or we aren't leaving. Not "approve" in every detail, but certainly we will require the Iraqi government to be friendly to us and willing to suppress terrorism. That may very well not be the will of a large part of the Iraqi population. It is by no means certain that ANY pro U.S. government could EVER exert sufficient control over the territory to survive without 130,000 foreign troops to prop it up. 2) We could (and likely WILL, I think) end up accepting a government whose sole virtues are its willingness to stay in power and suppress terrorism inside the country by any means necessary. That's what many of our Arab world "friends" look like; in the interests of just GETTING OUT we could easily end up replacing Saddam with "another brutal dictator". 3) The plan effectively gives the Iraqi populace the power to decide our foreign policy for us. If they go along, we can leave. If they don't, well, I guess we "stay the course". That is a good definition of "quagmire". We can't just leave. But the plan inspires little hope in ME, anyway. I think that it is based on a neoconservative worldview that, like all ideology, may not match reality.
