In March Britain will begin pulling their troops out of Iraq. Most of the troops will be gone by June. As of now, there is no plan for United States troops to fill the void left by the British troops.
The pullout is contingent on elections to be held in Iraq sometime in January. If the elections are successful, Britain will initiate the troop withdrawal sequence.
It will be a loss for the United States to lose the 4000 British troops. However one can only wonder how long it will be before President Elect Obama calls for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. We can only hope that the election in January is a success and that the withdrawal of a western military presence from Iraq will not hurt the fledgling democracy.
I know this is a pretty heated issue, so I will just come out and ask – should we be out of Iraq by now? Regardless of what your position is, we can all agree that this nation needs to have a stable government set up before US military presence is withdrawn. If no stable government is set up, all of our time and money in Iraq will be a wasted effort. I simply can’t think about all the young men who have died in Iraq and then believe that it was all in vain. I feel like we are so close, it would be a shame to pull out prematurely.
