PIÑON CANYON PLAN IS A COUP
With a new compromise standoff should end

   In baseball, one side must lose for the other to win. Prosperity,
however, isn't a game and it shouldn't be treated as such. In a good business deal, both sides - buyer and seller - win.
Until Thursday, the Army's plans to expand Fort Carson's Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site was a political football in a game where one side would win and another would lose. Most southern Colorado residents opposed the plan, and Army officials said it was essential to the country's defense needs. But things have changed, and it looks like the game might become something prosperous and real.

   Army officials Thursday announced they would give up their immediate plans to obtain 418,577 acres of land to expand the maneuver site. Instead, they will settle for trying to obtain 100,000 acres near Trinidad in Los Animas County. In a meeting with the Gazette Thursday, Assistant Army Secretary Keith Eastin said the smaller expansion would satisfy the country's national defense needs for the foreseeable future.

   The half million acre plan was ambitions, to say the least, and had some land owners in southern Colorado ready to wage war against it. The plan threatened to substantially alter the character of a massive ranching region, and Army officials faced the likely possibility of drawn out disputes with unwilling sellers.

   To achieve the plan, imminent domain procedures - in which a court orders a property owner to sell and sets the price - were almost inevitable. For the Army to win, it seemed, unwilling sellers would have to lose.

   The new, scaled back plan may end the standoff. Eastin believes enough willing sellers exist to accomplish the plan, and he's eager to speak with property owners in the proposed area. Much of the land the Army needs is owned by one person, Denver businessman Craig Walker.

   When the county was seeking nearly a half million acres, Walker said none of his land was for sale. A spokesman for Walker told the Gazette Thursday that things may have changed as a result of the Army's desire to compromise. In his words: "With the new proposal we have something to talk about."

   If the Army's plan moves forward, it will provide an enormous economic boost to southern Colorado. Eastin promises 100 civilian jobs at the training site and $140 million in construction. He estimates the 100 permanent jobs - mostly administrative, maintenance and some high tech - will combine for a $5 million annual payroll. Eastin insists he desires land only from "willing sellers."

   The Army has listened to the people of southern Colorado. The community should respond by scaling back on the kind of opposition that's immediately closed to consideration. The new plan is reasonable, potentially workable, and should be given a chance.

   Reasonable as it is, however, the plan depends on land owners giving up ties to the land and moving on to live new and different lives. It's not a minor decision for anyone.

   Therefore, Army officials would do themselves, the residents of southern Colorado, and the entire country a favor by erring on the side of a creative, sensitive and flexible approach to wheeling and dealing for land.

   Willing sellers should be reasonable, and the Army should be generous. And everyone should remember one important fact: this isn't a war, nor is it a game.

   It's the United States Army, working with citizens of Colorado to achieve a goal that's important to our country's defense. If we all try to get along, we all might prosper.

IRAQ MUST FLY SOLO SOON

   Apparently this isn't quite the kind of Iraqi democracy the Bush administration had in mind. Earlier this month Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki let it be known that the Iraqi government would be reluctant to sign an agreement formalizing the status of U.S. troops in Iraq, unless it included a timetable for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.

   A new agreement is needed because the U.N. resolution authorizing the presence of U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq is due to expire at the end of the year.

   Speaking to Arab ambassadors at a meeting last Monday in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Maliki said: "The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal." Making it clear that this was not just an off-the-cuff or unguarded, Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari reiterated the position later in the week.

   Despite the fact that the Bush administration has consistently opposed the idea of a timetable for withdrawal when suggested by Democrats or other critics of the war, one might have thought that it would have been pleased by such a statement. It indicates that the Iraqi government is feeling strong enough and independent enough that it doesn't believe it needs the crutch of U.S. troops much longer. That has been the ostensible goal of U.S. policy for a long time.

   Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2004, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that if an elected Iraqi government asked us to leave, "I think it's obvious that we would have to leave. I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

   When informed that Mr. Maliki had suggested a withdrawal should come sooner rather than later, however, Sen. McCain at first suggested the statement must have been mistranslated. Informed that the translation was accurate, McCain surrogates suggested that Maliki wasn't really serious, that he had been forced by political exigencies - Iraq has elections scheduled for October - to, in effect, pander to public opinion.

   Consider, however: if the Iraqi prime minister feels pressured to talk about a timetable, it suggests that not only Iraqi public opinion as measured by polls of the entire population but nearly all factions in Iraq are eager to see an end of the U.S. occupation and a return to full Iraqi sovereignty.

   It is possible that some of the dire consequences predicted by advocates of a longer-term U.S. occupation - civil strife, rejuvenation of al-Qaida in Iraq, perhaps even a civil war - could happen in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal. But the Iraqis in effect are telling us that they don't think the consequences will be so dire, but they are prepared to face them.

   Taken in conjunction with a prediction by Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who is in charge of building Iraqi security forces, that Iraq's army and police will by fully manned and operational by mid-2009, this should be a signal for the United States to begin preparing as soon as possible for an orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.

   It might take as long as the 16 months Democratic nominee Barack Obama predicts. But the process should begin quickly. Freedom isn't something one country can give to another.

   It's something a culture must take and defend. We have given Iraqis the opportunity for freedom. They should take it; we should leave.