I can't help but wonder

The coalition of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari ran in the January 30 election, as did others, on a platform of calling for a timetable for US withdrawal. Once elected, those coalitions started backpedaling on that and have been doing so ever since. Now, the shift of position has become more obvious than ever. First, the May 9 issue of the Iraqi Press Monitor, a project of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, quoted Al-Adala as reporting

President Jalal Talabani said in a May 9 statement that it was currently impossible to set a schedule for the withdrawal of United States troops, as Iraq still needed them to ward off any possible "foreign interference".

(Al-Adala is issued daily by the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.) This despite the fact that just in April, Talabani was confidently predicting a US withdrawal "within two years." Then, just this week,

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says he is worried that the US may pull its troops out before local forces are able to maintain security[, the BBC reported].

He told the UN Security Council that the US-led Multi-National Force should stay in the country until Iraqi forces were able to do the job themselves.

The thing is, this renewed determination to cast their lot with the US, which comes at the cost of increased cynicism not only among Sunnis but even among their own constituency, which is assuredly not crazy about the continued US presence, comes at a time when some US officials and others are becoming more and more downbeat about prospects there.

For example, Tony Karon, writing in Time magazine last week, notes that

[t]he International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) ... warned Wednesday that it would take five or six years before the Iraqi security forces being built by the U.S. were close to being capable of imposing and guaranteeing order in Iraq. Until then, Iraqi security would likely remain the responsibility of U.S. forces, meaning continued strain on U.S. military resources and, as things stand, limited prospects of prevailing against the insurgency for the foreseeable future. Indeed, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick conceded last Friday that the counterinsurgency war in Iraq could last a number of years.

Meanwhile, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, says it's "too early" to predict when troops will come home, a sentiment also expressed by another senior officer, who suggested to the New York Times that U.S. military involvement could last "many years."

And all the while, more and more Americans are losing confidence in the possibility of "success" in Iraq as they come to realize that the invasion was the wrong thing to do. Even Congress is getting restive: On May 25, an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act offered in the House by Lynn Woolsey (D-CA,6) saying it's the sense of Congress that Bush should develop a plan for withdrawal and submit it to Congress got 128 votes. No, not a huge number - but it shows a base of support and the first resolutions calling for withdrawal from Vietnam fared even worse.

So to get back to the title of this piece, what I can't help but wonder is if the more frequent, more overt declarations by Iraqi officials of their dependence on the US are pre-emptive strikes in an attempt to head off something they and/or their White House underwriters are seeing which is as yet unclear to us, realizing which we have yet to grasp: The ground is shifting, the weight of public opinion is leaning in a different direction, the burden of proof, if you will, is moving from those who oppose the war to those who support it. That we are, as I said just the other day, winning:

[S]lowly, painfully, with too much blood shed and too many lives lost and too much hatred generated, but still, slowly - we are winning.

I'm not suggesting there is some sudden political earthquake about to happen, that next week the masses of oppressed humanity in this country are going to rise up in righteous indignation and throw off their warmonger overlords. But United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is calling for three days of antiwar action in DC September 24-26, including a mass rally, interfaith services, and civil disobedience. I intend to be there, I hope you will be, too. Certainly I think it's time to get more dramatic in our opposition. And I do think it will be interesting to see what the next three-plus months bring in that direction.