American Withdrawal from Iraq

Following the news that the U.S. and Iraqi government have settled on a Status of Forces agreement that could - in theory - have all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011, Andrew Sullivan writes:

This is important because it removes from the hard right the possibility of playing the Dolchstoss card. The usual suspects - Reynolds, Hanson, Krauthammer, Kagan - will be unable to say that the chaos and mass murder that will almost certainly follow in 2010 and 2011 is Obama's responsibility. It isn't.

They will try to argue that Obama's choice to withdraw has led to a victory for al Qaeda and that the Democrats have stabbed American troops in the back. (You can almost write Palin's primary campaign message three years ahead of time.) But now that the Iraqis themselves have insisted on total US withdrawal by 2011 regardless, the neocons will not be able to play that card - or at leat [sic] play it with any credibility.

Well, color me skeptical. To the extent this card has any credibility will depend on the views of the broader public. But I'm fairly confident that the same people who embraced the "freedom agenda" for the Middle East will play such a card with gusto. In fact, we already see the contours of the new neoconservative argument: the views of the Iraqi government are subordinate to America's interests in the region and therefore, we must stay no matter what they say.

We already saw it happening before the campaign. Here's the American Enterprise Institute's Thomas Donnelly contrasting John McCain's approach to Iraq with Barack Obama's:

It was also revealing to note where the speeches sought sources of authority for their arguments. Senator McCain cited Gen. David Petraeus and “our troops on the ground when they say, as they have on my many trips to Iraq, ‘Let us win. Just let us win.’” Senator Obama noted that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, has embraced his 16-month withdrawal timetable.

Here's AEI's Danielle Plekta in testimony before Congress:

The question of the extension of the United Nations mandate that governs the allied presence in Iraq has received undue attention, and distracted from the very real question of American interests. Presumably, one's position on the wisdom of the initial decision to topple Saddam Hussein notwithstanding, few responsible American leaders are interested in leaving Iraq if in so doing they create an environment that poses a threat to American security or that of our allies.

The same voices that cried out for "democratizing" the Middle East will smoothly transition into accusing Obama of selling out America's strategic interests to the Iraqis and their Iranian masters. Unlike the "democracy promotion" argument, this one will have the convenience of appealing to "Jacksonian" conservatives who never cared much for the "freedom agenda" in the first place.