Would leaving Iraq damage U.S. standing in the world?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/270636,CST-EDT-REF24A.article

February 24, 2007
BY JUSTIN LOGAN

Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Wednesday that he would begin withdrawing British troops from Iraq immediately. Though Blair stopped short of setting a timetable for the full withdrawal of British forces, his decision to pull 1,600 soldiers out of Iraq, at a time when the United States is sending more than 21,000 more into the war, must be seen as a harbinger of defeat for the U.S. mission there. Denmark, which has 460 soldiers under British command in the Shiite south of Iraq, announced plans to withdraw its troops by August.

The Bush administration has shifted noticeably from defending the war to emphasizing the suspected downsides of withdrawal. President Bush continually asserts that the consequences of leaving Iraq would be "grievous and far-reaching," and result in a "nightmare scenario." The president has focused on two negative consequences: a loss of U.S. credibility, and the prospect that withdrawal would precipitate a reverse domino effect, propping up the authoritarian governments that Bush's Iraq policy was intended to undermine. These claims echo the arguments of Lyndon Johnson, who argued against cutting our losses in Vietnam.

The issue of credibility was so central to America's Vietnam policy that tens of thousands of Americans died in the pursuit not of victory, but of saving face. They died because American leaders believed then -- as the Bush administration apparently believes now -- that defeat would have uncontrollable consequences. But the wiser voices inside the Johnson administration were arguing as early as the mid-1960s that the costs of defeat were manageable.

On Sept. 11, 1967, the intelligence community issued a secret memo, "Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam." The authors considered the dire predictions about the dangers if the United States were to withdraw from Vietnam. The memo concluded that the perils of accepting an unfavorable outcome would be "probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument has indicated." Further, the memo argued, "it should not be beyond the capacity of our leadership and diplomacy to negotiate this passage."

[warrior1]

1. Too late for that

the moment we stepped foot there, we lost.

[dkofos]

2. I'm sure we could make ammends if we turned the entire MIS-

ADMINISTRATION over to the proper authorities to be tried for war crimes.

[Toots]

3. Maybe if we left in Defeat but we wouldn't

Every single thing the IWR was based upon has been accomplished. Our armed forces did the job they were asked to do. What is causing the USA to lose all credebility is our remaining there not our leaving...Declare Victory and have a huge ticker tape parade for our returning troops. Bush* would go down as a hero instead of complete failure...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Our "standing" now as as warlike, rapacious, rogue nation with an idiot in charge?

I think BushCo has managed to burnish that (well deserved)image beyond repair. The mask of "land of the free and home of the brave" has been removed and can't be replaced.