US in Iraq: the beginning of the end?

Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, as well as Britain and other US allies outside the Middle East, have to face the fact that the US is not going to stay in Iraq, as voices within the Republican party are increasingly questioning continued US presence in Iraq, according to the New York Times:  

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate for President Bush's strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush's aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war's future and financing.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush's strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

"When you count up the votes that we've lost and the votes we're likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim," said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations.

Of course, the pull-out proponents have to understand that a U.S. pullout from Iraq will mean the collapse of U.S. presence in the Middle East, with all that implies for every U.S. ally in the Middle East, and with all that implies for supplies of oil to Europe and the U.S., and yes, with implications for Israel too. That's the way the cookie crumbles. There is no way to avoid the issues in the long run.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Cross posted:  Israel News     Middle East Analysis