Wretchard:

You’re making it sound as though a responsible withdrawal of American forces may take at least twenty years to accomplish. After all, there is reason to believe that a complete withdrawal of American forces within four years would leave Iraq at the mercy of its neighbors. It would probably take about twenty years for Iraq to develop the military capability to deter its neighbors from meddling in its internal affairs.

Any long term treaty between the United States and Iraq with an expiration date effectively constitutes a timetable for withdrawal. Even the UK’s 99-year lease of Hong Kong from China constituted a timetable for withdrawal. It will be rather interesting if liberal Democrats continue to talk about timetables, but start talking about them in longer increments of time. The question will be whether the pace of withdrawing troops will be measured according to the geological time scale.