I guess ya hafta be there to understand

After Tony Blair announced that the UK was drawing down 1/3 of it’s presence in Iraq, the whiteflag Republicans started freaking out according to the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman and Peter Baker;

“What I’m worried about is that the American public will be quite perplexed by the president adding forces while our principal ally is subtracting forces,” said Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a longtime war supporter who opposes Bush’s troop increase. “That is the burden we are being left with here.”

The notion that the British pullback actually signals success sounds like bad spin, added Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). “I think it’s Alice in Wonderland looking through the looking glass,” he said.

It’s almost as if they didn’t believe the President when he said we wouldn’t be in Iraq one more minute than we needed to be there. Blair is only pulling 1/3 fewer troops than he has now because THEY’RE NOT NEEDED. When was the last time we heard of a major assault in predominantly Shi’ite Basra?

In fact on the second internet page of the WaPo story cooler heads are quoted;

“What the British are doing, and what we really need to do, is to tease out the cultural complexities of this thing,” said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.). “On the one hand, they are signaling to all the Iraqi people, whatever sect they are — Sunnis, Shias, Kurds — they are not going to be an occupying force. That’s a powerful signal to send. And the other signal is that they are passing the torch to the Iraqis, who are the only ones who can handle this ancient — I’d say primitive — sectarian dispute.”

The White House argued that comparing the British situation in Basra and the U.S. position in Baghdad fundamentally distorts reality. The south, where the British have been in charge, has no Sunni insurgency and far less violence than Baghdad or Anbar. The coalition plan all along has been to pull out foreign troops when an area is ready for Iraqi control, the White House said.

The announcement was hardly a surprise to Bush Administration despite the WaPo’s opinion posited as a headline that it was awkward timing. Sharon Behn of the Washington Times quotes Secretary of State Rice;

“The coalition remains intact,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a visit to Berlin. “It is the plan that — as it is possible to transfer responsibilities to the Iraqis — coalition forces would no longer be needed.”

And the Brits aren’t withdrawing completely. Apparently Prince Harry is being deployed to Iraq in the Spring;

Harry – a second lieutenant – has expressed his desire to serve alongside his comrades in Iraq, saying that there was “no way” he was going to undergo rigorous training and then stay away from the battlefield. He graduated last year from Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

Good on him! That might help the British understand why soldiers go to war. Might.

According to BBC News, Tony Blair insists that he’s not opposed to sending more troops if they’re needed in Iraq again;

However, when he was asked about reversing that decision on the Today programme, he said: “I don’t want to get into speculating about that because we have the full combat capability that’s there.

“So, if we’re needed to go back in any special set of circumstances we can, but that’s not the same as then increasing back the number.” 

So how the Washington Post considers this “awkward”, I have no idea.

UPDATE; By way of Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, I discovered that Reihl World View has a link up to a January 11, 2007 BBC article announcing Blair’s plan to withdraw some troops from Iraq.

Category: Media, Politics, Terror War