Politics & Power Quote by Howard Coble

Coble’s sentence performs a familiar Washington two-step: promise urgency while preserving maximum wiggle room. “As I have been saying for more than a year” isn’t mere throat-clearing; it’s a preemptive credential. He’s staking a claim to foresight, insulating himself from charges that he’s late to question an Iraq strategy that, by the mid-2000s, was already fraying under insurgency, casualties, and public impatience.

The phrase “turning this vital mission over to the Iraqi people as soon as possible” signals deference to the popular exit narrative without actually committing to an exit. “As soon as possible” is the key softener: it sounds like a deadline, but it’s really a mood. The “vital mission” framing keeps him inside the patriotic consensus even as he edges toward withdrawal, a rhetorical helmet that lets him critique the war’s management without sounding like he’s critiquing the war’s premise.

Then comes the real power move: outsource the hard decision. Congress should “debate” the handover while “relying on our military commanders to set up the timetable.” That’s civilian oversight reduced to discussion, while authority migrates to the generals. It flatters the military as apolitical expertise, but it also functions as political risk management: if timelines fail, blame can be displaced onto “conditions on the ground” and the people tasked with defining them.

In context, it reads as a party-line compromise between hawks demanding perseverance and a public demanding an end-state. It works because it offers accountability theater (Congress debates) and operational sanctuary (commanders decide), merging democratic posture with technocratic escape.