In his recent essay Iraq: Last Chance, Robert Zelnick reports:
"The center of gravity for both Americans and Iraqis right now is something hard to measure: Time," observed Colonel David Gray, commander of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division operating primarily in the Kurdish North. "How much time and perseverance do we have?" The consensus among those I interviewed was that if a dramatic reversal in the country's fortunes could not be demonstrated within the next 6-12 months, the call to establish a deadline for withdrawal would become a cacophony of irresistible demands.
Which - if widened to the full scope of its implication - raises the following question (among many others):
With both Technocapitalist escalation to Singularity and Jihadist immanentization of the Planetary Caliphate climbing on highly excitational trajectories, who stands to benefit more from prolonged anticlimax? Or, inversely: Who’s really under time-pressure here?