Captain Ed Morrissey comments on the absurd editorial in the LA Times today. Here's a sample from that editorial:
Ironically, all this good news might make it harder to get American military personnel out of the country. The better things go in Iraq, the less likely it is that U.S. generals (or politicians) will want to risk jeopardizing their hard-won gains by drawing down. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has agreed to a request by Gen. David H. Petraeus to return to the pre-surge level of about 130,000 troops by August, and then allow a "strategic pause" to evaluate whether more can come home.Where to begin? Captain Ed notes that we're still in South Korea and Germany, and no one complains about that. Come to think of it, isn't there a lot more strategic importance to keeping a troop presence in Iraq than in Germany? After all, the most dangerous forces in the world today are in the Middle East, including Iran's pursuit of nuclear arms and Saudi Arabia's funding of jihadist madrassas across the globe. Disengagement from that area after a hard-fought victory is folly, and shows that the Los Angeles Times and the Democratic Party do not understand and are not prepared to fight the war against Islamic jihadism.
Battlefield commanders know best how many troops are needed to keep the country stable, but as a political and economic matter, U.S. forces must leave Iraq eventually -- sooner, if voters choose a Democratic president, much later if the president-elect is Republican John McCain. Either way, the United States needs a logical, orderly exit strategy that minimizes the risk that civil war will resume when our troops leave.
By the way, you can just taste the disappointment of the editorialist. What they most want is American failure and retreat, not victory, which would almost certainly mean a small, long-term troop presence to remain involved in an extremely important region of the world. Make no mistake; it may sound extreme, but they want us to lose. Progressivism, you've come a long way.
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