The Reality of our Sojourn in Iraq.

No matter what any Democrat thinks or any Republican, except the President, we aren’t leaving Iraq any time soon. In his speech this week following the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, the President said troops would remain in Iraq “beyond my presidency.” Since he has no intention of even thinking about further withdrawals until March, under a best case scenario, the troops remaining after he goes back to Texas will exceed 100,000, the number Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says might be possible.

From an editorial, “Someone Else’s Mess,” by Thomas Friedman in the Sunday New York Times:

“In one fell swoop George Bush abdicated to Petraeus, Maliki and the Democrats….Petraeus to handle the war, Maliki to handle our timetable and therefore our checkbook, and the Democrats ultimately how to figure out how to end this.”

Let’s assume that a Democrat wins in ’08. Obama is the most “aggressive” (leaving out Kucsinich who has no realistic chance) of the candidates wanting to withdraw a brigade or so a month. That would have troops gone by early 2010, more than two years from now. The other Democrats have varying views of withdrawal, which would presumably extend our presence down the road some.

Republicans. McCain is running around the Country on something called the “No Surrender” bus, which sounds more ominous than than even Bush. Giuliani, Romney and Thompson don’t use the “Bush” word, they’ve replaced it with the newly cool word “Petraeus.” They all think he’s a cool guy with a great plan that needs time to work. Were they to become President, my guess, we’ll be there in a significant time past 2010.

On the Iraqi political front, a Sunni political party with 11 of the 275 members of the Parliament ended its boycott started in June because the government agreed to help some displaced families and agreed not to talk about oil revenue sharing until after Ramadan ends(?). 17 out of 49 ministers in the Maliki administration have quit or are on some kind of strike. The Sadr guy’s Shiite party, 30 members, walked out of Parliament yesterday. Finally, “[t]he head of an al Qaeda-led group in Iraq, in an audiotape posted on Saturday, announced a new phase of attacks to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ‘I am honoured to declare at the start of Ramadan, an invasion named after the martyr Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ...,’ Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said in the 31-minute tape posted on an Islamist Web site."

Isn’t all this progress great? Some Sunnis come back, three times as many Shiites leave. A third of the cabinet isn’t working. And al Qaeda is celebrating a religious holiday by announcing an “invasion.”

Worth every penny and life we’ll spend over there over the next few years, isn’t it?