I had these thoughts while reading a thread on Ace of Spades about the report that a majority of the Iraqi Parliament has signed on to a letter by al-Sadr asking U.S. troops to leave the country.

A commenter writes, “I’m sympathetic to Ace’s view that we don’t really owe the Iraqis anything at this point.  [But]… We owe it to ourselves to maintain the perception worldwide that America means what it says.” I presume he means that the U.S. has publicly committed itself to getting Iraq to a stable, united, and democratic entity before withdrawing U.S. troops; if we leave before that is completed, we suggest that we are willing to abandon our allies (like the Iraqis working with us) and reward our enemies (Syria, Iran, al-Qaeda in Iraq, Sadr, etc.).

Here’s the problem: America doesn’t mean what it says.

Leaders of foreign countries, our allies and our enemies and everyone in between, can read the papers. They know Americans were iffy on the war in 2004, and were ready to give up, pull out, and let the chips fall where they may by 2006. They know Congressional majorities don’t want to fight this war anymore. They know the American public wants the whole mess to just go away and get off their television screens.

Not enough Americans believe that there will be dire consequences if we abandon Iraq to whatever fate awaits it without us. Too many Americans believe that whatever Iraq can become, it is not worth additional sacrifices in blood and treasure. This country had gotten used to low-casualty combat missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Haiti, Gulf War I, Panama, bombing runs on Qaddafi, our “tanker war” with Iran in the late 1980s, Grenada. (In Somalia, the country said “to hell with it” after the Black Hawk Down incident, giving Osama bin Laden a useful example for his propaganda.) Americans were conditioned to believe wars could be fought with servicemen’s fatalities in the low three figures or less. When the KIA total in Iraq hit, oh, say, 1,000, the country began to wonder if the price was too high, an unanswerable calculation. Is transitioning Iraq from postwar chaos to a stable democratic ally worth 900 lives, but not 1100? 50 but not 500?

In the end, America’s isolationist tendencies always come back, and polls indicate Americans eventually conclude, “Aw, the hell with it.” Was there really much recrimination in the United States over Saddam’s smashing the Shia and Kurds after the first Persian Gulf War after the United States encouraged them to rise up against the dictators? Few care, in this country at least. The Turks felt they were promised certain policy concessions for putting their troops on the border during Gulf War I and taking in refugees. Clinton came into office, and the promises were forgotten. Administrations change; if a promise isn’t written into a ratified treaty, it’s written in disappearing ink.

The world knows that any country that crosses the United States does so at great risk, but only for the duration of the attention span of the American people.