U.S. Troops to Begin Leaving in Spring

Let the withdrawal begin!

"Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and the top U.S. commander in Iraq Wednesday and discussed specific steps to speed preparations for the withdrawal of some of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq beginning as early as next spring.

The tone of statements by Rumsfeld and Jafari, as well as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, suggested a heightened urgency to planning for the U.S. troop reduction, despite the continuation of lethal daily attacks by insurgents in Iraq."

Naturally, we will continue to hear language about "staying the course" in Iraq, proof of which will be self-evident because we wouldn't be pulling out troops unless things were going well, right?

Now I know there are plenty on the left who think that the only way to rectify the mistake of being over there in the first place is the pull out our troops and bring them the hell home, and the sooner the better. They argue that the war against the insurgency is a lost cause and Iraq is doomed to chaos anyway, so why stay longer and suffer pointless casualties? And they may have a point, except that it would be both politically and morally degrading for us to simply abandon the Iraqis to a conflict that we essentially created, without exhausting every possible effort to secure the country. Exhausting every possible effort is, of course, something that we're not going to do. Thanks to a combination of those who never wanted to be over there in the first place and want us to withdraw now, those who supported the war but think since we didn't find any WMD's our job is over, those who don't really care, and the political weakness of this administration to actually "stay the course", we can look forward to more trips by Rumsfeld to encourage the Iraq government to get on with the "signposts" of progress (such as the constitution) so we can appear to be succeeding enough to get the hell out of there. The irony of course is that hundreds of soldiers will have died for a nothing-the WMDs that never existed-that we found worthy of going to war for in the first place, while hundreds more will have and will continue to die for an actual worthy cause-securing Iraq's democracy and the safety of Iraqi citizens-and yet it is in the very midst of the worthy cause that we will draw them home. History will judge us harshly for such a choice.