Krauthammer gives them 2 months

Two months to get their act together or we're leaving. The article is here:

Key excerpts:

What do people think we’ve been doing for the last five years? True, the president’s rhetoric has a tendency to go soaringly Wilsonian, e.g. the banishing tyranny stuff in his second inaugural address. But our policies of democratization in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon have been deeply rooted in the most concrete of American interests.


If we really had been in the grip of “idealism,” we’d be deep in Chad and Burma and Darfur. We are not. We are instead trying to sustain fragile democracies in three strategically important countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon — that form the geographic parentheses around the principal threat to Western interests in the region, the Syria-Iran axis.

...

The U.S. should be giving Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a clear ultimatum: If he does not come up with a political solution in two months or cede power to a new coalition that will, the U.S. will abandon the Green Zone, retire to its bases, move much of its personnel to Kurdistan where we are welcome and safe, and let the civil war take its course. Let the current Green Zone–protected Iraqi politicians who take their cue from Moqtada al-Sadr face the insurgency alone. That might concentrate their minds on either making a generous offer to the Sunnis or stepping aside for a new coalition that would.

...Very hardheaded realist terms: interest, stability, regional powers. But stringing them together to suggest that Iran and Syria share our interests in stability is the height of fantasy. In fact, Iran and Syria have an overriding interest in chaos in Iraq — which is precisely why they each have been abetting the insurgency and fanning civil war.

Indeed I was crestfallen when Bush dug up Baker and his ilk. I didn't like them the first time around let alone now. I knew that Baker's first act would be to throw Lebanon over to Syria in exchange for empty promises. Baker's "status quo/oil flow" mentality signals defeat and surrender. I'd rather see us leave of our own accord and speak not a word to Assad and Amendenijad. Bush should have appointed Joe Lieberman to SecDef and brought on the serious Democrats who want to win this one no just use the war to score political points with their base.