Democrats working on a timetable for getting out of Iraq had better realize that the other side's timetable is measured in many years or decades. Yesterday I listened to Barham Salih, Iraq's deputy prime minister, tell an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center that stabilizing Iraq will take many years. "If you think this will be fixed any time soon, it won't be," he said.

When I asked him about polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis outside of Kurdistan want U.S. troops out of Iraq, and about the majority of the Iraqi parliament that signed a bill calling for a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, he said:

"I don't know about these polls. Many Sunni neighborhoods [in] Baghdad are keen on keeping the American troops in Baghdad. Senior Shia leaders ... consider the United States to be the stabilizing factor. ... There is no serious political movement, with the exception of the Sadrists, who want a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Max Boot of CFR says:

If we're going to be successful in Iraq, we're going to have to make a long-term commitment. That doesn't mean 170,000 U.S. combat troops stationed there for 10 years, but it does mean a substantial force -- tens of thousands of soldiers -- will be needed for many years to come.