Leaving Iraq

Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain said, of our pullout from Iraq this last weekend, "this decision of a complete pullout of United States troops from Iraq, was dictated by politics and not our national security interests. I believe that history will judge this president's leadership with the scorn and disdain that it deserves."

Once again John McCain proves that the Republican Party's last presidential candidate is a hothead lacking the character and the judiciousness needed for the job, as was true of the preceding GOP president, as was even more true of the GOP's last entry for vice president.

And it's an indictment of the GOP's seat-of-the pants, little boy acting tough foreign policy ideals.

The situation in Iraq is the hand President Obama was dealt when he took office, and the outcome was predictable from the moment the Republican administration chose to invade Iraq with a skeleton force--a force fully able to defeat Iraq's large, ramshackle military in combat, but waaay too small to be able to occupy and administer a nation of that size. As General Powell told him.

Senator McCain didn't say which of the two alternatives President Obama faced he would have chosen:
1. Declare war on Iraq's current government, or
2. Put all American soldiers in Iraq under the jurisdiction of Iraq's courts, the nonnegotiable condition for our troops staying that the Iraqi government set at the behest of the current Iraqi goverment's patron, Iran.

I don't find either of those alternatives acceptable. I'd love to know which one McCain wanted.

Iraq was bound to become something of a client state of Iran from the moment we invaded, given the fact that we invaded, and in the way we did--and because President Bush I told Iraq's Shiites to revolt during Desert Storm, then abandoned them to Saddam's tender mercies.

People who've been betrayed tend to remember it. And it means we pushed Iraq's Shiites into Iran's eager arms, even though Iraq's Shiites are Arabs and Iran's are mostly Persians, and thus have genuine tribal differences.

But Iraq's government is quite beholden to Iran under the table--and there isn't a thing we can reasonably do about it now. And it's the cake Bush baked. Obama's just serving the unpalatable slices to us.

And McCain should reserve his wrath for his own party and Chef Bush instead of shooting the maitre d'.