The used car salesman……

I’ll have to say this, we are living in interesting times. Obama makes Republicans happy and pisses off Democrats about Iraq, who would have thunk it?

If David Petraeaus needs a job after he leaves the military-assumng he does not continue his role as 21st Century American Caesar and run for President-he can always take up selling used cars.

Because it seems to me, that him and Gen Odierno snookered Obama but good when it came to withdrawing from Iraq.  They said they needed 23 months to get most combat troops out of Iraq. Obama settled for 19-and caved on the number of troops left in country after that. I want to see a break down of exactly what units will comprise the remaining 50,000 after August 2010.  It won’t be pretty-especially if it commits us to be Iraq’s Air Force, and Praetorian guard for Maliki for the remaining 17 months till 2011.

If we leave by 2011. Its clear to me-from watching the Generals lobby the President and from the data in Thomas Ricks book, that the surge lovers are in no mood to ever leave Iraq. Like a stoplight in Naples, they regard the  SOFA agreement as advisory in nature only. The surgeaholics are so in love with the idea of “victory” -a meaningless term at this point when it comes to Iraq-that they are prepared to see America stay for years after years in that Godforsaken country. They don’t want us to ever leave-they believe their own rhetoric about “a long war” and also believe that “fixing” Iraq will take a long time. They have gone native.

What’s always bothered me about that line of thinking is that it gives, once again, a pass to the Iraqis for their inability to rise above their stupid religion and their stupid tribalism. I don’t expect much to be gained by staying, and if Iraq does fall apart if we leave-why can’t that be on their heads, not ours? Even Gen Odierno, in an interview in December 2008 for Rick’s book acknowledged that, “”What we’re finding is that as Iraq has become more secure, they’ve… moved backwards, in some cases, to their hardline positions.”

Stephen Walt points out that regardless of motive-the surge did not achieve the strategic goals it set out to achieve.  Thomas Ricks has pointed out the same thing.

Most important of all, the evidence in The Gamble points to a different conclusion than the one Ricks advances. His account shows is that even after the United States got the right commanders in charge, employed the right approach, and adopted more realistic goals, it was still unable to achieve its broader strategic objectives. Thus, Ricks’s belief that we must stay for another ten years or more doesn’t really follow from his own account: if we couldn’t win under the best circumstances we can reasonably expect, why linger on?

The simple answer is we shouldn’t. If anything, we should paying the troop withdrawals forward, and pulling a fair amount of troops out this year, not next year, to show the Iraqis we mean business and that their American umbilical cord will not last forever-and that whatever stupid course they choose, it will be their Arabs asses, not ours, that have to suffer the consequences of choosing wrongly. A visible, significant early withdrawal would break the status quo mindset that Petreaus and others are counting on to make our presence in Iraq permanent. Deep down, I wonder if that is what the Fred Kagans et al really want-empire without the perks that come with owning the territory.

And we should be clear what the costs of staying exactly are:

And let’s be clear about what staying in Iraq entails. Keeping U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely means we will continue to hemorrhage our power and wealth on behalf of a government that has 1) already forced us to sign an agreement to withdraw, 2) is openly hostile to Israel, 3) friendly to Iran, 4) lukewarm about us, and 5) increasingly uninterested in Washington’s desires. And this is the regime on whose behalf we should expend more blood and treasure?

Obama had a hard choice politically. He could stick to his guns and open himself up to a huge wound when, thanks to the deity status that has been imposed upon David Petreaus since September of 2007 ( Thanks to Move On.Org), he would be subjected to criticism that he had not listened to his military commanders. The conservative critics would have had a field day with that.

Or he could have gone along with the longer time table and the greater residual force and appeared to have been the more reasonable guy. This latter alternative might pay off-but it makes a big assumption. It presumes, that the case won’t be made again that we have to “slow down”-especially if we keep losing soldiers the way we are this month. It would seem he’s opted for the latter course-it helps get the war off the radar screens. With the current economic mess-he probably figured he could do that. There is a cost, of course-by conservative projections it is at least 3 Americans a week. Guess they can all live with that-I sure can’t.

Getting out of Iraq sooner-rather than later needs to be the goal. Because every day we stay in that country we are doing ourselves no favors. Nor, for that matter, are we doing any favors for the Iraqis. Iraq is no longer a war we can afford, militarily, diplomatically or economically. I would ask the President to make the step that the Bush could not-and put American interests first.

U.S. forces cannot prop up venal, incompetent, or corrupt leaders, and threatening to go home and leave them to their fate is often the best leverage that we have. And if a government we are trying to help cannot help itself, then exercising that exit option is the right response. I hope Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Zardari are paying attention, but I hope Obama is, too.

For now though-we are driving a used car off the lot-one that David Petreaus sold “as is-No warranty”.