Juan Cole: Pulling out of Iraq Would be Bad

Juan Cole admits the Iraq surrender plan touted by Democrats would be a disaster and amorally prefers it were enacted during Bush’s watch:

“The central question is whether the Democrats can force a significant reduction of troops from Iraq on Bush's watch, so as to avoid Iraq becoming exclusively their headache when they (as is likely) take over the White House in January of 2009…

.. If the Democrats cannot prevail in withdrawing before Bush goes out of office (and they cannot), and if they then rapidly draw down the troops on taking office in 2009, they face the real prospect of a "Gerald Ford meltdown" of the sort that occurred in 1975 when the North Vietnamese and their VC allies took over South Vietnam.

Juan’s pointing out another difference between Iraq and Vietnam – the Democrat Congress shafted the Vietnamese with a Republican sitting in the White House. If they take the Presidency in 09’ they get the chance to shaft the Iraqi’s while they are at the helm. That option isn’t looking too pretty:

But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. The consequences may include even higher petroleum prices than we have seen recently, which at some point could bring back stagflation or very high rates of inflation.

In other words, the Democratic president risks being Fordized when s/he withdraws from Iraq, by the aftermath. A one-term president associated with humiliation abroad and high inflation at home? Maybe I should say, Carterized. The Republican Party could come back strong in 2012 and then dominate politics for decades, if that happened.

Didn’t President Bush mention something simliar the other day? Of course for Juan the real disaster isn’t such consequences as boat people, killing fields, and re-education camps. It’s the self-inflicted damage the Democrat’s can expect in return for enacting their policy. Juan laments:

It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.

Really? Seems to me the ones advocating the unilateral pull-out ought to be the ones to get the credit for the consequences.

Originally posted in UNCoRRELATED Sept 13 2007