President Bush insists that we have no conflicts with the al-Maliki government. The president isn’t telling the truth — or he himself doesn’t support our military’s efforts. He can’t have it both ways. Bush appears increasingly desperate just to get through the upcoming elections. ~Ralph Peters

Were Clinton seemingly playing an electoral game with foreign policy (perish the thought!), the outraged cries about irresponsibility and villainy from the usual suspects would be deafening.  Were Clinton endangering American soldiers and allowing someone like Moqtada al-Sadr to dictate through Maliki where and when our soldiers can be and what they can do to maintain the facade of a successful nation-building exercise, well, I think some folks on the right would be a tad upset.  Remember the old Republican line about not letting Americans serve under foreign commands?  That was back when Republicans didn’t like peacekeeping, interventions and nation-building–no, really, it’s true!  This is not quite the same thing as that (our soldiers are not under foreign command, but Maliki acts as if he is their commander-in-chief), but it is close.  Peters, McCarthy and Rubin have so far expressed the appropriate disbelief and anger about this.  We wait for other jingoes to break out of their election-cycle administration boosterism to decry what everyone, regardless of their views of the war, has to regard as an inexcusable betrayal of trust.