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Team W. Throws a Bone to the Isolationists

Filed under: Imported

Robert Novak's column yesterday was an extraordinary heap of b.s.--even by his standards. 

For those who missed it, Novak posited that immediately after the election the Bush administration will implement a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. By this time next year, according to Novak's "sources" (none of which are named naturally), there will be no American troops in Iraq.

Now this is extraordinary because it runs completely counter to everything that's ever been publicly uttered by Team W. In fact, it's basically the Dennis Kucinich position.

The most hilarious graf in Novak's column (although it was extremely difficult to choose) is the one where he attempts to come up with some supposed intellectual justification for rapid withdrawal:

Getting out now would not end expensive U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, and certainly would not stop the fighting. Without U.S. troops, the civil war cited as the worst-case outcome by the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate would be a reality. It would then take a resolute president to stand aside while Iraqis battle it out. (My italics).

In other words, it would be an extraordinary act of courage for President Bush to stand idly by as Iraqis slaughtered each other in a fit of sectarian violence. I guess, by this reasoning, President Clinton and the U.N. displayed great fortitude by ignoring the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in the mid-90s. Perhaps Novak's next column will be a salute to the courageous world leaders currently averting their eyes from the genocide in Sudan.

But my main point is this: Robert Novak is full of hooey. There's no way the Bush administration is going to rapidly withdraw from Iraq. Such a plan would fly in the face of everything the neo-cons believe. It would undermine their entire worldview. All those cute theories about democracy and the Middle East that Wolfowitz dreamed up in the 90s from his ivory tower at John Hopkins University would be rendered irrelevant. This won't happen. These people never admit they're wrong. They've drank too much of the Kool-Aid.

Novak, as usual, is being used by Team W. as a convenient mouthpiece. My theory is that they're floating this notion of a withdrawal to appease the increasingly disgruntled isolationist wing of the GOP, as personified by Pat Buchanan. These folks are appalled by our actions in Iraq, but there's little chance they'll vote for John Kerry. They might, however, just decide to cool their heals at home on election day. This is the administration's disingenuous attempt to get them back on the bus.

Posted by Paul Demko at September 21, 2004 1:48 PM

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