i criticized the obama withdrawal plan yesterday because of the residual force issue. but that shouldn't obscure the fact that this is still a great step forward, one i've been hoping to see for the past 6 years.
what's really surprising, pleasantly surprising, is that the plan is getting a lot more criticism from the left than from the right. the "stay the course" brigade has largely vanished. i'm not sure where they went. maybe all this shouting about how awesome the surge was has convinced too many conservatives that there's nothing left for u.s. troops to do over there. or maybe now that bush is gone they don't feel the need to mindlessly defend his positions anymore. or maybe the fact that bush agreed to a timetable for withdrawal at the very end of his presidency means that now they're only interested in mindlessly defending that.
who knows why? the bottom line is that with "stay the course" out of the mix, the debate will be between those who want a 35k-50k residual force, those who want a smaller residual force and those who want none. not only does that legitimize the "no residual force" position (which only a year and a half ago was reserved only for marginal presidential candidates), it also leave open the possibility that number of troops in iraq after august 2010 will be lower than what obama is talking about now. that's all good news as far as i am concerned.
