Bush has always claimed that his invasion of Iraq was not a unilateral action, but a legitimate war conducted by a "coalition" of nations. The idea is ridiculous of course.
A few other nations were pressured to send a few hundred troops to give Bush some cover for his unneccessary unilateral action, but these few troops from a few other nations never added up to even 10% of the "coalition" forces in Iraq. And in fact, many of them have either already withdrawn (such as the Polish troops), or are in the process of withdrawing (like the few Italian troops).
The largest force besides the U.S. troops has been the British troops sent by P.M. Blair, and they only have 7200 troops in Iraq, mostly patrolling around Basra in the south. Now, even the British are abandoning the "coalition".
The Guardian newspaper in London is reporting that the British will pull out at least 1000 troops in May of this year, and by the end of 2008, the British will have pulled out all of their troops. This will leave the U.S. alone in Iraq.
No one, including Bush himself, expects the violence in the Iraqi civil war to be under control by then. But Blair has been ruined politically (and possibly the Labour Party itself) and can no longer justify continuing the war. The British public simply will not stand for Blair's support of Bush's war any longer, and may actually put the Tories back in power in the next election. Blair has no choice. He must withdraw.
This effectively destroys the pretense of a "coalition". But don't expect this to have any effect on Bush. He long ago gave up hope of winning in Iraq. Now he is spending American lives in the vain hope of salvaging his own pride.
He lied to get us into this war, and now that it has blown up in his face, he is lying to keep us there. His pride is more important to him than the lives of American soldiers. It is time for Americans to demand an immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. Anything else is just bloody futility.
i think he's desperately trying to salvage his legacy. it just goes to show that he has not changed or matured. he's always been a failure who had people to clean up his messes. he's just going to leave iraq and afghanistan to the next president and retire comfortably with his golden parachute.
ReplyDeletemeanwhile, our army is breaking, our economy's in the shitter, and we're all worse for wear.
-annatopia
The most fun part is watching Cheney and Rice try to spin it so that two nations doing totally opposite things (the U.S. increasing troop presence and the U.K. decreasing it) are somehow supposed to be following the same strat.
ReplyDeleteNote to Blair: If (as you claim) your troops aren't needed in southern Iraq, move them into Baghdad, where they are needed.
No doubt I've exhibited tremendous ignorance, and this common-sense answer is somehow double ungood or something.
Sorry for overcommenting, but did you see this?
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6385137.stm
My guess as to the gist, as far as I can make out from the Newspeak, is that Blair got an angry phone call from Cheney and is now doing a tap dance. So he said maybe he'd send the troops back in.
"when he was asked about reversing that decision on the Today programme, he said: "I don't want to get into speculating about that because we have the full combat capability that's there.
?
"So, if we're needed to go back in any special set of circumstances we can, but that's not the same as then increasing back the number." "
?????
Don't expect it to make sense Matt. Bush and Cheney haven't made sense in years.
ReplyDelete