The American Mandate? 02/24/2010
Thomas Ricks, a respected Washington war reporter, argues that the U.S. needs to renegotiate the Status of Forces Agreement and keep 30,000-50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. The current agreement, signed by both the Bush administration and the Iraqi leadership in 2008, stipulates that all US forces are to be out of Iraq by the end of the next year. Andrew Sullivan, sensing the coming pushback against withdrawal, is livid:
If Obama does not have the courage to withdraw [from Iraq] regardless of the consequences, he will end up entrenching Bush's insane gamble, not ending it, as he was elected to do. If Obama increases troop levels in Afghanistan and extends Bush's timetable for leaving Iraq, why on earth did we support him? Those were McCain's policies. Why have elections if they are essentially meaningiless?
Occupations are the foreign [policy] equivalent [sic] of entitlement programs. They never end. Why should Americans be denied basic access to health insurance because the money is going to sustain 50,000 troops in Germany, for Pete's sake, or to tamp down sectarian conflicts that have existed for centuries in a country we had no troops in for all of US history until 2003?
When will this madness end? Do we really have to go completely bankrupt and be forced to withdraw from these anachronistic pretensions? Are seven years not enough?
If Obama does not have the courage to withdraw [from Iraq] regardless of the consequences, he will end up entrenching Bush's insane gamble, not ending it, as he was elected to do. If Obama increases troop levels in Afghanistan and extends Bush's timetable for leaving Iraq, why on earth did we support him? Those were McCain's policies. Why have elections if they are essentially meaningiless?
Occupations are the foreign [policy] equivalent [sic] of entitlement programs. They never end. Why should Americans be denied basic access to health insurance because the money is going to sustain 50,000 troops in Germany, for Pete's sake, or to tamp down sectarian conflicts that have existed for centuries in a country we had no troops in for all of US history until 2003?
When will this madness end? Do we really have to go completely bankrupt and be forced to withdraw from these anachronistic pretensions? Are seven years not enough?
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