Making the Case for Precipitous Withdrawal.

February 7, 2007 by mugsy.

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SPECIAL EDITION

Like most people, I’ve been opposed to the “precipitous withdrawal” option that President Bush and most Republicans have been falsely trashing Democrats with for more than a year now.

“Cut & Run!” is what they accused any Democrat of that even remotely recommended “redeployment”. Most Democrats respond by saying, “almost nobody is calling to pull all of our troops out of Iraq all at once. Just a few on the far Left.” Most Democrats have agreed with the notion that precipitously pulling ALL of our troops out of Iraq all at once would mean utter chaos in Iraq with a civil war that could very well spill over Iraq’s borders into neighboring countries. Also, that abandoning Iraq “dishonors the lives of the fallen”. Just typing this all out, the flaws in those arguments become appallingly clear.

I’ve suddenly… surprisingly… find myself to be one of those people calling for “precipitous withdrawal”, and it’s not because I don’t have the stomach for a fight or believe that we should pull out simply because the war was wrong to begin with (which it was).

A few months ago, stories started popping up of “death squads dressed in police uniforms” killing dozens… even hundreds… in Iraq. Like most people, my reaction was probably that the uniforms were stolen or perhaps the uniforms were “look-alikes”. But I figured out something today:

WE ARE NOW TRAINING, ARMING AND UNIFORMING THE IRAQI INSURGENCY! Insurgents are joining the Iraqi police and military, being given weapons and training in how to use them by our own military, donning their uniforms and going out and killing U.S. soldiers and Iraqi’s of opposing sects. And now President Bush wants to EMBED our own soldiers in with these same Iraqi’s?

“We’ll stand up as they stand down”. Well, they’ve been standing up, but we’re not standing down. In fact, Bush now wants to send MORE. And if victory in Iraq REALLY was as crucial as the Bush Administration claims, they wouldn’t be sending just over 20,000 new troops (or is it 48,000?), they’d be sending 20x that number, and no one would be unwilling to pay more in taxes if everyone agreed that success in Iraq really was that crucial to our long-term safety. But the American people have done a “Cost/Benefit Analysis” of the war in Iraq in their own minds. It’s not worth paying more in taxes and it’s not worth supporting a Draft to get the soldiers needed for victory. Certainly you’ve seen/heard all the Republicans that tell us how crucial it is to win in Iraq, but never do they advocate making any sacrifice besides “making TV time a little uncomfortable.”

We are now TRAINING THE INSURGENCY! And arguments that a “precipitous withdrawal” will result in a civil war that expands beyond the borders of Iraq is nonsense. Iraq’s neighbors will quickly fight to keep Iraq’s dispute inside Iraq. They may even send troops into Iraq to quell the violence in order to ensure this. But they are NOT going to do it with our troops there.

You may now count me among those advocating “precipitous withdrawal”. Hopefully, the case for withdrawal will grow to the point where it no longer is considered a “Far Left extremist position”.

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