Iraq: The Day the U.S. Abandoned One of Its Own

Mark it on your calendars: October 31, 2006 was the day that the U.S. abandoned one of its own troops in Iraq.

One of the few heart-warming stories from an otherwise blood chilling war is that U.S. commanders have allowed nothing to stand in the way of rescuing captured troopers. The saga of Jessica Lynch comes to mind.

But on Tuesday, political expediency trumped the noble and time-honored American military tradition of one life being worth as many as it takes to save it when troops abandoned a cordon thrown around Sadr City put in place after 41-year-old Army linguist and interpreter Ahmed Qusai al-Taai (*) was kidnapped in the area.

U.S. soldiers loaded orange traffic cones and coils of concertina wire onto their Stryker assault vehicles and slunk back to their barracks in the Green Zone on orders from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.

Sadr City is a seething slum of 2.5 million Shiites controlled by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads the most powerful sectarian militia in Iraq. Under Al-Sadr's command and with Al-Maliki's acquiescence, the Mahdi Army has gone from merely protecting Shiites to the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis.

On Tuesday, Al-Sadr issued an ominous warning that he would take unspecified action if the cordon was not removed, and Al-Maliki quickly obliged in ordering the Americans out, in effect abandoning the kidnapped soldier.

And so the U.S. slides further down the slippery slope that is Iraq.

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The incident is yet another perverse instance of the U.S. being damned if it does and damned if it doesn't in Iraq because of a bankrupt war policy and incompetent leadership that throws snake eyes every time it roles the dice.

The key to subduing violence in Baghdad are neighborhood checkpoints so that troops can keep close watch on the activities of militias and insurgents responsible for the violence.

Subduing violence in Baghdad is the key to securing the rest of the country.

Securing the rest of the country is the key to enabling U.S. troops to begin withdrawing.

The Bush administration has called on the Iraqi government to become more independent and to act more boldly, but the result of it doing so in this instance is to embarrass a weakened White House busy flailing at that easiest of targets -- an idiot by the name of John Kerry -- and to knock the pins out from under the strategy to make Baghdad safe.

And so the U.S. slides further down the slippery slope that is Iraq.

Al-Maliki said last week that "I'm not America's man in Iraq" after he condemned a U.S.-led raid on Al-Sadr's redoubt in search of Abu Deraa, a notably bloodthirsty Mahdi Army commander. The prime minister said such raids would not be tolerated in the future.

Which begs the question: If Al-Maliki isn't the U.S.'s man, who the hell is?

And so the U.S. slides further down the slippery slope that is Iraq.

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(*) There has been much harumphing on right-wing blogs that Al-Taai got his just desserts because he is an Iraqi by birth had married an Iraqi woman, which is against a regulation forbidding members of the military from wedding citizens of the countries where they are in combat.

Al-Taai, who is an Army Reservist from Michigan, has been in the U.S. since 1980 and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He married 26-year old physics student Israa Abdul-Satar in February 2005 well before he was sent to Iraq.

(Photograph by Hadi Mizban/The Associated Press)