It’s good to see an Iraqi government spokesman explain that Prime Minister Maliki’s comments to Der Spiegel, in which he seemed to endorse Barack Obama’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, “were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately.”  According to CNN:

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the possibility of troop withdrawal was based on the continuance of security improvements, echoing statements that the White House made Friday after a meeting between al-Maliki and U.S. President Bush.

That is, in fact, the position that Senator McCain (whose campaign I advise) has been pushing all along. He has been arguing for a “conditions based” withdrawal as opposed to the fixed timetable demanded by Obama. If Iraqis are ready to assume all responsibility for security by 2010, then it would be perfectly fine to withdraw most U.S. troops, and no doubt President McCain would do so. But it’s dangerous to commit to such a rigid timetable when it’s impossible to envision what the situation will look like at that time. Officers in the Iraqi Security Forces, who have a closer day to day view of the situation than does the Prime Minister, are not sanguine that a turnover by 2010 will be possible.

A recent Washington Post story contains this quote :

We hope they will stay until 2020,” said Brig. Gen. Bilal al-Dayni, a commander in the southern city of Basra, where about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers patrol the streets after a major offensive in March against extremist militias.

That matches the views of Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Qadir. Earlier this year the New York Times quoted him as follows :

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.

And that also matches the view of General David Petraeus. He was just asked by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News: “Is 16 months a reasonable time to get U.S. troops out and turn it over to Iraqis?”

Petraeus replied:

It depends on the conditions, depends on the missions set, depends on the enemy. The enemy does get a vote and is sometimes an independent variable. Lots of different factors I think that would be tied up in that. The dialogue on that and the amount of risk, because it eventually comes down to how much risk various options entail. That’s the kind of discussion I think that is very important as we look to the future.

General Petraeus would never inject himself into domestic politics, so you have to pay careful attention to his pronouncements to glean his views. Sometimes what he doesn’t say is as important as what he says. Note that he most assuredly did not say that, given recent security improvements, we could withdraw all U.S. combat forces within 16 months with minimal risk.

Obviously if Iraq’s government decides it’s time for U.S. troops to leave, leave they will. But despite Maliki’s ambiguous comments, Iraq’s government has made no such decision. All they’re demanding is a nebulous “time horizon” for an eventual departure. To judge when such a withdrawal would be prudent, it is better to rely on professional military opinion–Iraqi and American–for a true assessment of the security situation rather than listen to the rhetoric of politicians who are forced to navigate the political currents. Especially when their words may lose something in translation.