In July of 1967, Great Britain announced it would be withdrawing from all of its military bases "East of Suez" over a period of years.
That schedule for withdrawal actually accelerated, as did British national decline, at least until Margaret Thatcher came to power and ushered in the United Kingdom's return to a more muscular and confident role in the world.
Friday's announcement of President Obama's decision to abandon Iraq is at least as stunning as Great Britain's in 1967, for the United States is not a second-tier world power trimming its reach to match its resources, but the only global superpower, one with responsibilities to maintain global security as best as can be done, with a special obligation to at least cabin the most belligerent of the sinister nations.
Though Obama and his advisers attempted to spin the collapse of the "status of forces" negotiations with Iraq as simply the execution of presidential policy, too much information was already on the public record for even the president's staunch allies in the mainstream media to swallow the wholly unpersuasive "up is down" and "left is right" rhetoric.
For months, the debate had raged within the Obama administration over the minimum number of troops the United States would have to maintain in Iraq in 2012 and future years to preserve Iraqi security and deter Iranian adventurism.
The very low end of that scale was 3,000 troops and the higher estimate was at least as high as 20,000, and this range does not reflect the commentary or input of the cadre of Iraq specialists who helped craft and implement the successful "surge" strategy of 2007, which brought order and peace out of chaos.
"Many Iraqis -- especially ethnic Kurds, secular intellectuals and Sunnis skittish about Shiite power -- have expressed anxiety about what the country might become without an American military presence," reported the New York Times on Sunday.
Indeed. What are Tehran's mullahs to conclude except that the door is open wide and their opportunity to fuse Iraq with Syria and Hezbollah in a united front of extremism has arrived.
For if the United States won't even commit a force of a few thousands to help preserve what has been won at such extraordinary cost in lives and treasure, why should Iran be worried that the same country will dare to oppose any push against Israel or the Sunni states.
The president and his spin doctors in and outside of the government appear poised to try and cover a global retreat through the repetition of the names bin Laden, Awlaki and Gadhafi, as though necessary victories in a series of battles somehow make up inevitable triumph in a war.
The Republicans who want to be president have to challenge this absurd argument that the United States can safely withdraw from the world and leave it to its own devices, except for patrolling some of the skies on some of the days with some of the drones at our command.
It is an illusion and one that will lead to wars far greater in fury and cost than those of the last decade, as weakness in the face of aggressive outlaw states always does.
The president may have resigned himself to defeat next November and thus to a course of actions he deems legacy builders, but global retreat and the consequences of that retreat will be an indictment, not a legacy.
"President Obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women," former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney concluded Friday.
"The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government."
"The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq," Romney added in what is clearly an invitation to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon to hold hearings and soon into this fiasco.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/10/obama-snatches-iraq-defeat-jaws-victory#.Tqcz3ZeeynE.blogger#ixzz1cEsSikxw
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