EXPERIMENT. To add to Scott's able denunciation of Ken Pollack's discussion of the "experiment" of leaving Iraq, it's important to emphasize that anything the United States does from this point forward is an "experiment." Those who denounce withdrawal plans as "assuming, asserting that there would not be any consequences from withdrawal in Iraq," have to give some kind of semi-plausible account of how continued maintenance of a large presence in Iraq will both a.) be better than the status quo, which is almost incomparably awful, and b.) actually lead to some kind of positive end state. Thinking that the explicitly temporary deployment of 20,000 soldiers will win a counter-insurgency war, for crying out loud, has to be.... I don't know. I'm at a loss for vicious, angry epithets. Professional political scientists should know better than this.
--Robert Farley
