Joe Hill at Goodies 2 Choose does a fine job of summarizing the security, economic, and political progress in Iraq over the last eight months drawing on statistics and a few anecdotes. Immediate withdrawalniks will, no doubt, counter by noting that some of the improvement is due to ethnic cleansing which I suspect has some validity to it. I have yet to see much evidence that ethnic cleansing is the sole reason for the improvement in the security situation in Iraq, that the increased troop presence on the part of the U. S. and, more importantly, the change in tactics resulting in increased visibility of those troops has nothing whatever to do with the improvement in security, or that the immediate withdrawal of U. S. forces will put a fire under Iraqi politicians to arrive at some sort of political reconciliation.
Unfortunately, I still think that there’s little reason to believe that Iraq will be stable enough for us to withdraw our forces for years. And even less fortunately the risk of withdrawing too soon is real, we have real interests in ensuring that Iraq is stable, and I have yet to see any plan for preserving that stability without our leaving troops in Iraq.
