Sometimes an article states what I've been trying to articulate and understand so well, that there's little I can add. Robert Parry has an excellent analysis up entitled, "Why the Left Won’t Accept Success," about the inability of the left to grok that anti-war activism and sentiment was a big part of the election of President Barack Obama, and that President Obama has kept his promise to end the war in Iraq and pull out all troops by the end of this year.
It's an illusion, we are told. Just today, someone posted a diary claiming that the administration was drastically building up troops in the region, even though the reality based media is reporting the largest military withdrawal since the end of the Vietnam War, a math trick that could only be accomplished by not netting the redeployment of troops against the massive withdrawal. There will be mercenaries and contractors. All credit goes to George W. Bush who agreed to the SOFA that required the pullout. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Parry shows that each of these complaints is incorrect, and that such arguments rely on a number of rhetorical postures, including the need to believe that the establishment/neo-cons/MIC are all powerful and could not possibly have been affected by an election or a president who campaigned on ending the war.
Angry Black Lady goes further and points out a number of articles over the recent past that predicted with certainty that the December 2011 pull out deadline would be delayed, she asks why those fortune tellers are not writing today to say that their predictions were wrong.
Here are some of the key arguments Parry makes:
Why the Left Won’t Accept Success
October 25, 2011
By Robert Parry
Last Friday, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would complete the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq by Christmas, a development that you might have thought the anti-war Left would cheer.
But that’s not been the case for some activists, at least based on a sampling of the writings that I’ve been sent. Instead of celebrating the success of the anti-war movement in bringing this war to an end, I’ve been reading commentaries either insisting that it’s all a trick or giving the credit to President George W. Bush.
It appears that some don’t want to accept that the anti-war movement has won a hard-fought victory and that Obama’s election was a factor. It’s almost as if the fact that something has been achieved through the deeply flawed U.S. political system threatens a preferred political analysis, which holds that nothing good can happen.
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Others observe that the Iraqi government negotiated the “status of forces agreement” setting the timetable for a drawdown of U.S. troops with President Bush in late 2008 – and thus President Obama should get no credit. He should just be denounced for not ending the war sooner.
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The neocons are furious because they saw Bush’s SOFA as only a holding action and expected that the U.S. government would twist the arms of the Iraqis to get them to accept a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. The neocons are now condemning Obama for not doing so.
Please check out this extended piece. Also thanks to the DemocratsForProgress forum for bringing it to my attention via AngryBlackLady