I'm not sure I'd buy into any timetable for a likely US withdrawal from Iraq. Any president who would do it--or go along with it, in the case of the Congress--would make tremendous enemies of the Insane Fifth or Insane Quarter of the presently active civil population and a like number that defers to the Insane. All whipped into a madness by the people who'd now love to get out. I can't imagine a Democrat with the guts to do it.
My guess (and it's only that) is that the US will try to de-escalate the conflict to something like the level of Vietnam before the Gulf of Tonkin. Most likely, the more they try, the more the insurgents will take a globally embarrassing toll on them. So, I think that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to last for some time. The upside of this is that it creates some real openings for the rest of the world. And it's going to cause immense disaffection and polarization at home. ML
