"Abandoning Iraq" is now "good policy?"

Ed Morrissey has an excellent post up over at Hot Air, in which he warns that the Iraqis are watching us closely, and with good reason. He quotes Vet for Freedom Michael Hunnicutt:

I was on the ground in Iraq for 16 months, and in that time I talked to hundreds of Iraqis. Some didn’t like us; some wanted us to leave, but most did not. What they wanted was for America to live up to its word. They wanted us to rid the country of terrorists and militias so that they could live in peace.

They were willing to help us, but they are not a stupid people. They know that if they commit to the American side and the Americans abandon them as we did in 1991, it means death for them and their families. They know this, and it is real. It is not an abstract idea for them.

Most Iraqis don’t support Al-Qaida and the militias, but when our commitment to stay in Iraq and finish the job is in doubt — as it was when Sen. Harry Reid went on TV and said, “this war is lost” — Iraqis are going to hedge their bets.

Indeed, why wouldn’t they?

Ed writes:

…we can argue over 2002-3 all we want, but it doesn’t have anything to do with 2008. We are in Iraq, and al-Qaeda is arrayed against our troops. In fact, this is the best possible situation if we want to fight terrorists — to have them on a battlefield in straight-up fights against our military. It’s exactly what terrorists don’t want. If they wanted to fight our military, they wouldn’t use bomb commuter trains and fly civilian airplanes into their targets.

We have plenty of politicians who still don’t understand the strategic advantage this gives us…The best commitment they’re willing to offer is that if they get too comfortable in their new digs, we’ll stage another invasion of Iraq — without considering the costs involved, both logistically and in human lives, and that it depends on finding another country willing to host us after twice leaving the Iraqis twisting in the wind.

It also presupposes that we’ll get welcomed back for a third round of destruction by the people we would have abandoned twice. If we betray them a second time, don’t expect a third welcome.

Indeed, why would they welcome us?

It’s one of the strange inconsistencies of the left. As I wrote about a year ago:

Didn’t George Clooney make a movie a few years ago called Three Kings, wherein the Iraqi people were shown to be victims of the Bush 41 Administration’s inability to keep its promise to the people of Iraq, due to political considerations? That was deemed – correctly – a negative sort of thing.

Why is it suddenly a positive thing for Congress to want to umm…rather unilaterally abandon the Iraqi people, once again…due to political considerations?

The Iraqis, not stupid people, are already pleading, please don’t abandon us.

Oh, that wacky side of the aisle and their staggering double standards! My sides hurt.

The question of why it was wrong to abandon the Iraqis to chaos in 1991 but is right to do it in 2008 is a really good one that I wish someone in the mainstream media with access to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Pelosi — or for that matter with access to someone like the anti-war George Clooney — would finally ask. I would love to hear the answer.

Meanwhile, Michael Totten, who is there, on the ground, writes about Fallujah, and how the surge brought order to that “mean” city.