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How Never to Withdraw From Iraq - by Tom Engelhardt

How Never to Withdraw From Iraq - by Tom Engelhardt
If you're wondering why in the world this matters – after all, won't the Democrats get us out of Iraq in 2009? – then you haven't come to grips with Bush's greatest magic trick of all. Though a lame-duck president sporting dismally low job-approval ratings, he continues to embed the U.S. in Iraq, while framing the issue of what to do there in such a way that any thought of a quick withdrawal has… Poof!… fled the scene.

Admittedly, somewhere between 57 percent and 64 percent of Americans, according to Rasmussen Reports, want all U.S. troops out of Iraq within a year. We're not talking here about just the "combat troops" which both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seem prepared to withdraw at a relatively stately pace. (Obama has suggested a 16-month schedule for removing them; Clinton has only indicated that she would start withdrawing some of them within 60 days of coming into office.) Combat troops, however, represent perhaps half of all U.S. military personnel in Iraq – and Republicans are already attacking even their withdrawal as cut-and-run-ism, if not outright treason.

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