The Price: Iraq Withdrawal In A Nutshell

Good analysis from Ken Lovell:

In a nutshell, we have to accept that as the aggressors in an unjust war, which we have lost, we have to pay a hefty price...

The consequences of us quitting Iraq will largely depend upon the manner of our going. If we do it with some concocted sham ‘victory’ story, or if we do it snarling and spitting, condemning the Iraqis as ungrateful scum and vowing “We’ll be back” as the last plane leaves the runway, then we may well sow the seeds of future conflict more or less as Bush has predicted...

We need to quit Iraq as part of a general admission that our foreign policy and our whole attitude towards other nations has been wrong-headed for years.

It sounds bad, but it is actually a very healthy realisation! Who dares spin it as such? Perhaps - dare we dream? - Barack Obama:

The legislation commences redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007 with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008, a date that is consistent with the expectation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Is it time to assassinate him yet?

UPDATE: Aussie Bob provides some realism:

Meanwhile (heartbreaking to watch) babies die in front of the cameras for lack of vitamin K. The sight of the father trying out different cardboard boxes to see which one fitted his 4 weel old daughter’s dead body will remain with me forever. His son, the daughter’s twin brother, died the next day. Just awful.

Contrast this with the unashamed (and boastfully proud) Bush supporter who was given the job of running the new Iraqi Health Department. A big, fat, toad of a man who had eyes almost as dead looking as Ruddock’s, as he obfuscated, made excuses and, in the end, claimed to have been a great success in his appointment.

I’m not sure that even pulling the troops out and putting the relief workers in will work, not as long as Bush and his cronies are in power. They’re 100% on the take, and I could see no reason to believe they’ll change their attitudes.

And the Iraqi oil industry is about to be handed over to them, pretty-well lock, stock and two greasy barrels. This is a deal being done between Iraqi government bureaucrats who live in Washington and London (not for them the dusty roads of the home country) and Texas oil companies. When the negotiations are over it is expected to be rubber-stamped by the Iraqi Parliament (or you know what will happen to them).

There is no justice in Iraq, and there is almost no desire for it among the occupiers. It’s not a matter, as Invig suggests, of the American carpetbaggers eventually getting it right. That have gotten it right. what’s happening seems to be exactly what’s desired: to return Iraq to Third World status and rape its economy as the object of the exercise.

In short, I don’t think the Yanks will ever “get it right” and start doing good in Iraq. That’s not the plan at all. The plan is to make themselves rich while Iraqi babies expire for ten cents worth of vitamins in a humidicrib held together - literally - with old, dirty Band aids.

And we are part of it. From AWB to the present day, we in Australia are in it up to our necks.