Bye bye Iraq

There are two pieces of news today that need to be put together to get the full story. The first is an article in the Washington Post saying the President is not going to seek any further funding for reconstruction efforts in Iraq and is winding down the reconstruction efforts:

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

The second is an article in the Sunday Times saying that the frequency of air strikes in Iraq has increased markedly since the summer.

AMERICAN forces are dramatically stepping up air attacks on insurgents in Iraq as they prepare to start the withdrawal of ground troops in the spring.

The number of airstrikes in 2005, running at a monthly average of 25 until August, surged to 120 in November and an expected 150 in December, according to official military figures.

Putting the two together, it seems pretty clear to me that we are about to cut and run in Iraq, while declaring victory. I'm now thinking it's a pretty fair bet that our troop strength in Iraq by the November elections will be only about a third what it is now. We've obviously completely abandoned the idea of a vibrant democracy in Iraq. A necessary condition for a vibrant democracy is a decent economy with a sound infrastructure. But, now we're abandoning the reconstruction effort. Another necessary condition is domestic security. We're trying to substitute airstrikes for troops in the battle against the insurgents, but airstrikes will do next to nothing to harm the insurgents and the widespread "collateral damage" caused by the strikes will likely encourage more to join the insurgency.

This, of course, is just one more illustration of the fact that this government will do anything for political gain.

I suspect this may be a little like the decision to pull out of Afghanistan prematurely in order to attack Iraq. We may be pulling out of Iraq in order to attack Iran (or perhaps Syria).

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the decision to get out of Iraq. We should never have been there in the first place, and now that we're there we need to face the fact that through our leaders' incompetence we've lost the war, and we need to get out. I just hope the American people understand that we're not leaving because we've won. Somehow, I doubt they will.