(U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway)
I don’t really know what Vice President Biden specifically meant by this:
On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Let’s give the substantive achievement to the Iraqis, yeah? But the administration truly does have a great achievement to its name here: Leaving Iraq is thoroughly uncontroversial. To say this wasn’t preordained is the severest of understatements. Iraq is, was and will be the most domestically embittering foreign experience since Vietnam. Had John McCain been elected president, you can bet that there would have been some diplomatic effort at amending the SOFA to maintain some significant residual presence in Iraq. Hell, the political climate on Iraq just 18 short months ago was such that Obama was pledging a 30,000-troop residual force.
It’s to his credit that he took the most sensible, balanced and conciliatory approach to withdrawal available. Gave Gen. Odierno an extra few months to withdraw combat troops and allowed him to backload the process, thereby preventing any antagonism. Promptly shifted the conversation back to Afghanistan (and Pakistan) where Obama argued the real focus on al-Qaeda belonged. Gave his administration’s most experienced quasi-diplomat the Iraq-diplomacy brief. The Republican Party, given the chance, decided relitigating the Iraq war wasn’t in its interest, and decided that it won the war during the surge, so why argue, and turned the page.
And so we’re leaving, with no domestic acrimony from any corner. There is no “Iraq Syndrome” haunting us, of any sort. That, I would suggest, is a lasting victory.
