This way to the Egress

Substantial penalty for early withdrawal.  You used to see that message on advertising for Certificates of Deposit.  Does it apply to Iraq?

According to a recent Newsweek poll, some 73% of respondents favored immediate withdrawal.  Of course it’s not a scientific poll.  It favors those who can read and who do read Newsweek, but that’s a pretty high number and reflects the feelings of Americans about Viet Nam back in the 1970’s.  Then and now, as the number of disaffected citizens increased, the volume of the rhetoric increased and all the media were filled with the “stay the course” and “only cowards cut and run”  and “victory with honor” nonsense.  We had the same “protest is abetting the enemy and undermining morale” arguments, we had the same attacks on our right to protest.   When SUV sales decline, you get more and more advertisements for them – it’s easy to mistake the phenomenon for an actual public interest in the product.  But it’s becoming clear that he people aren’t buying any more expensive duds from the Bush administration.  

Of course the will of the people and the actions of a President are not tightly linked and indeed many conservative types admire a leader for such intransigence.  The previous poll however, showed that only 15% would vote for a Republican candidate in 2006, so if we may be a long way yet from ending our occupation, a Democrat congress may put a withdrawal in sight, even if is difficult to envision a resolution favoring our interest in Middle East stability.

It’s not hard to understand the fear of a sudden withdrawal, the possible scenarios are all gloomy in my opinion, but then so were the scenarios 30 years ago when all of Asia would fall like dominoes to Communism and the “lights of freedom would go out” all over the world – or so they said.  They were wrong.