Jeffrey Shaffer at the Christian Science Monitor explores the reasons for using the "six month equation" for talking about the war in Iraq:
Here's an Iraq war math problem: What do you get by adding "timetable for pulling our troops out" to "staying as long as it takes?" To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how anyone would make such a calculation. But if you guessed the answer is six months, you'd be in agreement with a number of high-ranking officials.
The six-month time frame is like a political pressure-release valve that helps keep public debate about US policy from building up to explosive levels. . . .
His commentary puts Wobbly Gil's recent conversion experience in context:
Using the six-month gambit to keep morale from slipping during wartime isn't a new tactic. In a brilliant memoir entitled "Those Who Fall," World War II aviator John Muirhead recalled a visit from an intelligence officer who exhorted the squad of B-17 pilots to improve their bombing by saying, "Keep your formation tight. Hit your aiming point. Be sure and pick up your IP, clean and fast. You do that, gentlemen, and you'll shorten the war by six months."
So I wasn't surprised to see a story in the July 20 issue of The Washington Post that included a quote from Minnesota Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R), a onetime backer of the war. He now favors a partial troop withdrawal as a way of prodding the Iraqi government. "If we don't take the training wheels off," Mr. Gutknecht said, "we will be in the same place in six months that we're in today."
All of which brings up this question: How many of these six-month units can we keep adding to the Iraq timeline? I know that's another tough calculation. Does anyone want to take a wild guess?
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