Some key Republican supporters of President Bush’s Iraq war policy said this week that if the Iraqi parliament calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, their position could change dramatically.

“I suspect we would respect their wishes,” said Florida Rep. Adam Putnam, the third-ranking Republican in the House.

“I think that it would reflect a successful, healthy and well-running parliamentary organization [bold mine-DL] that was delivered to that nation by the sacrifices of our fighting men and women.” Putnam was responding to a bill a majority of Iraqi lawmakers signed on to earlier this month supporting a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces. ~Politico

Perhaps Rep. Putnam has not characterised the Iraq war as the “central front in the war on terror,” but I still found these remarks a bit surreal.  According to the administration and the usual suspects in the pundit class, Iraq is vitally important to the “war on terror,” it is the “central front” (never mind that counterinsurgency doesn’t have linear fronts) and “if we leave there, they will follow us here,” etc.  All of that is, of course, bogus, but it is the party line.  Meanwhile, the Putnam position, if we can call it that, seems to be: “We’re just there to help the Iraqis, and we’ll leave when they ask.”  So far, the first group of Republicans has been basically on the same page with this second, almost certainly smaller group, since the first group assumes that the Iraqi parliament would not request our withdrawal unless and until Maliki supported that move, which would mean that Iraq was sufficiently stable and the Iraqi government was capable of providing for security.  It appears that there are now pro-war Republicans who can envision the Iraqi parliament  calling for our withdrawal in the near future, whether or not the country has been stabilised.  That would seem to suggest that there are at least some otherwise stalwart supporters of the war in the House minority caucus who don’t really buy the heavy-handed national security arguments for staying in Iraq and who think that we really are just there on a nation-building mission.  I wonder how many Republican voters would continue to support the war so unflaggingly if that was what they thought the mission was.

Then there is this item at the end, which makes the earlier surreal parts of the article seem grounded and normal:

New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett, a Republican supporter of the war, said that such a move by the Iraqi parliament would be a reason for U.S. troops to leave. “That’s what the White House has been saying it wants. They stand up, we stand down,” he said.

Does Rep. Garrett even know what these talking points mean?  The “stand up, stand down, fight! fight! fight!” mantra doesn’t just refer to Iraqis casting votes on things or making public gestures that attempt to enforce their claims to sovereignty–it refers to Iraqi military units being trained and prepared to fight effectively, which seems to proceed at fairly excruciatingly slow pace.  What is being discussed here is an Iraqi parliament bill that calls for American withdrawal regardless of whether very many Iraqis have “stood up” or not.  Yet Rep. Garrett treats it as if it were all part of the official plan.

Incidentally, if war supporters think the Democrats are stabbing the troops in the back when they set a timetable for withdrawal, what would they think of Iraqi legislators setting a timetable or even calling for U.S. withdrawal outright?  If American legislators say, “Bring the troops home,” they are being disloyal and treacherous (in the pro-war view), but when Iraqi legislators say, “Take your troops away,” it is supposed to be perfectly fine and proof that Iraq can stand on its own?