Spain's Prime Minister elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has promised to pull his country's 1,300 troops out of Iraq. I found Matthew Ygelsias' reaction to this news curious.
Matt doesn't think that decision "could be anything other than a bad thing for the United States," and he's probably right, at least as it relates to the short term. If Spanish troops are withdrawn, U.S. planners will be forced to modify their arrangements in Iraq, and work to calm any other jittery members of the 'Coalition of the Willing' who are tempted by Zapatero's move.
Yet Matt qualifies his post, using the phrase, "I'm not exactly shedding tears for Jose Maria Aznar's People's Party, but..." before discussing Zapatero's decision. He claims that Spain's withdrawal evidences "one of the major pathologies" of the 'Coalition of the Willing' method; namely, that we can't force foreign governments to align themselves with our interests at the expense of their citizens' demands. Spain would be more likely to leave its troops in Iraq, Yglesias argues, if the occupation were being administered by NATO or the U.N., because it's "unlikely that a new government would break that commitment over a specific policy dispute with its predecessor."
I wonder: why all of these qualifiers?