Jon Rauch has the scoop.
As painful and polarizing as party-line warfare has been, however, a party-line retreat would be worse. Many Republicans believe victory (however defined) is a matter of American resolve. Quite a few think that President Bush’s new strategy is working but that Democrats won’t admit it. They think Democrats are intentionally undermining the war effort, in order to improve their own political prospects by giving President Bush and the Republicans—oh, and the country—a black eye.
So begins the narrative of betrayal: the “stab in the back” narrative, as its historical precedents ...
Even if the prospect is that the US can achieve nothing more in Iraq and should head out, there are those who will be looking with loss on the gains that may have been consolidated but were surrendered, instead:
We now have a large number of American and British officers who can pick up a phone from Washington or London and call an Iraqi officer that he knows well—an Iraqi he has fought along side of—and talk. Same with untold numbers of Sheiks and government officials, most of whom do not deserve the caricatural disdain they get most often from pundits who have never set foot in Iraq. British and American forces have a personal relationship with Iraqi leaders of many stripes. The long-term intangible implications of the betrayal of that trust through the precipitous withdrawal of our troops could be enormous, ... - Michael Yon (h/t Belmont)
(Of course, why we would be more guilty of these 'casualties' than others, is up for grabs).
HOW TO REACH CONSENSUS?
If there were demonstrable progress in the Iraqi Army and police, even if slow, would you be willing to accept deployments for another 2-3 years, and troop drawdowns that are a crawl, really?
What if I said that a new President could use 'precipitous withdrawal' as a way to get the Saudis (and others), at $100/bbl oil, to start paying for the entire deployment cost of $12Billion/month, at the margin?
Do we also need some metrics of whether our presence is increasingly inflaming the situation, rather than stabilizing it?
