It’s looking increasingly likely that when President Obama faces the voters in November 2012, he will have kept his promise to get us the fuck out of Iraq. And I don’t mean that we’ll be pretending to have left Iraq. It looks like we’ll have really left. Yes, we have a massive embassy in Baghdad and it will need protecting. And we’ll apparently have some presence in the cities of Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk, and those compounds will need protection, too. But that’s not really any different from any other country where we have consulates. The Iraqis aren’t going to give our troops immunity from prosecution, so we’re not going to keep a heavy presence there to help them maintain order, run their airports, or tamp down on any insurgencies against the central government.
I am sure that that our relationship will not end. I am sure that the CIA will continue to work with the Iraqi government, and that we’ll work out some contracts for military training on the equipment we’ll be selling them. But the war is going to end.
If true, this will fulfill the promise that mattered to me the most. I really, really wanted a health care bill. I got that. But I wanted out of Iraq more. Third on my list is getting the hell out of Afghanistan. That’s a work in progress.
Maybe it’s just me but I kind of wanted the health care bill most. History and stuff. Plus I’ve been on and off Medicaid the past few years. Did he promise out of Afghanistan? Should have just promised getting Bin-Laden’s ass.
Assuming the report is accurate, there’s a great book to be written (movie to be made, story to be told) of how Obama pulled this off. Combined with the beginnings of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and reading between the lines of news reports, it seems highly likely that there’s a bunch of generals in the Pentagon who are shocked and furious to find themselves outmaneuvered by a Kenyan Muslim socialist who never spent a day of his life in uniform.
Indeed. The institutional inertia from the M-I Complex iron triangle must have been immense. He not only had to decide that he wanted to do this, but that he would commit to pushing back against some powerful resistance in order to get it done.
I know there has been some pushback from the brass and the WH on this story, but correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this always the case with these stories, that the leak happens and the ferociousness of the pushback usually indicates the validity of the leak.
In this case, I dont see “major” pushback on it, so maybe this will be true…no?
There really isn’t any pushback.
Keep this template handy — you’ll need it for other stuff, and then you can just cut-and-paste.
He didn’t actually do it.
He didn’t do it fast enough.
He did it wrong.
He didn’t mean it, though he did it. You can tell.
If we are spared disaster and Obama is re-elected, you’ll get to use it a fair lot.
“Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.” Claude Louis Hector de Villars, Prince de Martigues, Duc de Villars, Vicomte de Melun
Like I said…., like clockwork.
And if you’re a Republican, be sure to add, “He was only able to do it, because Bush did the hard part of it first, and then he took the credit.”
I give Obama credit for getting us out of Iraq, I give him credit for the health care bill, and I give him credit for catching bin Laden.
But I don’t remember him ever promising to get us out of Afghanistan. I thought the idea was that he was going to finish the job.
I like the sounds of getting out of Iraq, but I have to ask, does this include mercen–ahem, contractor forces? It seems to be a habit since Bush II to treat military contractors as invisible when it comes to stuff like this.
I’m not saying this to beat up on Obama. I honestly don’t know the answer, and I’m not even sure there are reliable figures in the public domain tallying how many contracted boots we have on the ground in any given place.
According to AssPress, about 5,000 mercenaries/contractors/whatchamacallthem will remain. Whether or not they’ll be kept on a short leash remains to be seen.