If spineless Republicans force a withdrawal from Iraq knowing full well what will happen if we leave too early (namely wholesale slaughter) then I can tell you with 100% certainty, the political skins they are trying to save will not survive:
White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.
Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing.
Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.
You can almost hear the squeaks coming from their cushy leather chairs as they move their asses to the left on this issue, all hoping to save their political hides. al-Qaeda taking over the country? Who cares! Sunni and Shia deathsquads on each corner of every street in Iraq? Who cares!
These fools really think wholesale mayhem will get them votes.
I mean running like cowards worked so well in Vietnam right?
Sigh….
The Wall Street Journal:
The irony is that this political retreat is taking place even as General David Petraeus’s military offensive is showing signs of progress. "These Anbar [province] sheikhs who are cooperating with the United States have made an enormous difference in what was the most dangerous province in Iraq," said New York Times reporter John Burns in a recent interview on PBS’s "NewsHour." "I was out there today at the capital, Ramadi . . . and it’s gone from being the most dangerous place in Iraq . . . to being one of the least dangerous places."
Mr. Burns was talking about the trend among Sunni tribal chieftains to ally themselves with the U.S. and the Shiite government of Iraq against what they see as their gravest enemy: al Qaeda interlopers bent on making themselves the leaders of the Sunni community in Iraq. Al Qaeda has taken note of this shift by trying to murder the sheikhs, only increasing the rift between them.
That’s a battle al Qaeda is likely to lose, provided U.S. forces are available in sufficient numbers to help Iraqi forces defeat them. It’s also a battle that could bring moderate Sunnis on the same side as the predominantly Shiite government–just the sort of "reconciliation" our foreign policy mandarins have demanded of Iraqi leaders as the price of continued U.S. support.
Or as retired General Jack Keane told the New York Sun: "The tragedy of these efforts is we are on the cusp of potentially being successful in the next year in a way that we have failed in the three-plus preceding years, but because of this political pressure it looks like we intend to pull out the rug from underneath that potential success."
But why succeed when we can run like cowards in the hopes of getting re-elected.
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