Whatever it is they're smoking in Arkansas these days, Senator Mark Pryor is smoking more than his share.
"The Arkansas Democrat [was] a key holdout on his party's proposal to approve $122 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a goal of March 31, 2008, for winding up military operations in Iraq," said a front-page story in the WP. "Pryor wants a withdrawal deadline of some kind. He just doesn't want anyone outside the White House, Congress and the Iraqi government to know what it is."
Yes, a literal "secret plan"; a secret withdrawal date, secretly held by about 600 individuals, at an absolute minimum, all of whom make a living with their mouths.
To make it through life in this uncertain world, we all cling to certain fictions meant to provide some level of emotional security. One of those communal fictions is that to rise to the U.S. Senate one must have at least a modicum of mature judgment, no matter what ideological plane he or she operates from.
Then comes a senatorial idea like Mark Pryor's to shatter it all.
"My strong preference would be to have a classified plan and a classified timetable that should be shared with Congress," said the senator Monday, with moronity aforethought. To announce a deadline would clue in the hostiles, "who might just bide their time and wait for us to leave. Then you'd have chaos and mayhem and instability."
The collective boneheadedness of those mere three sentences is awe inducing. It was no trifling, off-the-cuff concept, after which one quickly apologizes on grounds of hastiness. No, it was "thought" out, presented to the media and proffered for his colleagues' consideration in amendment form.
It seems almost silly to even bother countering such silliness, but on the other hand, silliness seems to have a way of assuming the armor of seriousness these days, so perhaps it is best to do so.
The thought that all 535 members of Congress would hold secret some fixed date of withdrawal is positively otherworldly. Yet the belief that Iraqi government officials -- most of whom are self-interestedly aligned with a warring sect -- would do likewise resides exclusively in some parallel universe. And if nothing else, wouldn't someone notice when the Humvees, one by one, every few days, started rolling back to Kuwait?
As for the combatants "biding their time" if given an announced withdrawal date, by and large that happens to be what they're doing now, which makes any withdrawal date -- scheduled or not, public or not -- meaningless. Which is to say, sooner or later we'll leave; and the combatants know that. Any secrecy behind the "when" makes not a whit of difference as to its inevitability, making a sectarian intermission, as things are, a reasonable strategic choice.
Finally, of course, the sheer blindness underlying a prediction of "chaos and mayhem and instability" unless we hang around for a while is nothing less than breathtaking -- prima facie evidence of the senator's sure and steady consumption of a reality-altering substance.
What's even more breathtaking, however, is that anyone would have to point these things out to a United States senator.
Mark, I understand Britney is out of rehab. So there's a bed open.