The Iraq Quagmire takes a turn for the worse

Andrew Sullivan:

While the media is obsessed parsing the ad libs of someone on no ballot this fall, something truly ominous has just happened in Iraq. The commander-in-chief has abandoned an American soldier to the tender mercies of a Shiite militia. Yes, there are nuances here, and the NYT fleshes out the story today. But the essential fact is clear. In a showdown for control of Baghdad, the Iraqi prime minister took orders from Moqtada al-Sadr, and instructed the U.S. military to withdraw from Sadr City.

In practical terms that means that president Bush is merely the titular Commander-in-Chief (i.e., in name only) while everyone else from Rumsfeld on down the line had to jump when Sadr said to jump. Abandoning a soldier in the process!

Sullivan continues...

The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing.

Damn straight!

Meanwhile Digby asks:

Try to imagine what would happen if a Democrat did such a thing.

Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, James Dobson and the rest of the rightwing shills would be foaming at the mouth in feigned outrage if a Democratic President abdicated command of our forces to an Arabic Islamic cleric, much less to one with the blood of so very many on his hands, including the very likelyhood of the impending bloodshed by the American soldier Bush left behind.

This is seriously fucked up.