The Turning Tide

Principled Iraq war supporter Andrew Sullivan says the abandonment has begun, responding to this Washington Post piece about Bush administration plans to zero funding for reconstruction once the current allocation runs out.

I've written over and over again against abandoning Iraq (a search in the sidebar will yield a number of results for that term) and repeatedly stated my sense that Bush would abandon the country once it was politically expedient to do so.

Sullivan supported the war for principled reasons; I opposed it for exactly the reason above. Bush is many things, but serious has never been one of them. He owes a special kind of apology to the families of troops who've died in Iraq. Their purpose was noble, his was simple self indulgence. There is no excuse for it.

In July, I was covering various reports from Britain and the US that troop numbers would decrease dramatically in early 2006. I opposed the move, writing sarcastically about Iraq: "Well, I guess it's their own fault for not settling down before the midterms. After all, we'll say, we tried. We gave them every opportunity, we'll say, but what we'll mean is that they're just too dumb and backwards to accept democracy. It isn't our fault that our president has to orchestrate the Republican front in the 2006 elections. It's Iraq's fault that Iraq lost."

This is what Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the reconstruction in Iraq, told reporters at a recent news conference: "The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq. This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

I guess Iraqis are just too dumb to have put their nation back together again after thirty years of dictatorship, cataclysmic wars, a massive bombing campaign, a nearly three-year-long occupation, and a vicious insurgency.

Sullivan's right. The abandonment has begun.

Additionally: Susan Hu at the Booman Tribune seems to take issue with the word "principled" when applied to Andrew Sullivan, but it's worth noting Sully's sharp criticism of the conduct of a war he pushed hard to have. Is that principled? I think so, but others may judge it differently.