There's no mercy for the weak in the Middle East; if America ducks out of Iraq in a way that makes it look like it is actually ducking out of Iraq, well, you won't want to be an American in the Middle East, believe me. Of course, if America stays in Iraq, you might also not want to be an American in the Middle East. More thoughts later; right now I'm busy picking up my 401(K) off the floor.
It's a good point, and one people like me tend to overlook. One of the cool things about Lawerence Wright's Looming Tower is how he indicts U.S. policy but still notes that there are actual crazies there who do hate America for its freedom. My problem has always been this--at this point, I could not send my son to fight in this war. Like a lot of Americans, I felt different at the start. But I just couldn't do it now.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
There's no mercy for the weak in the Middle East.
This is fucking stupid. People who live in the middle east are exactly that, people. This means that mercy, along with any other human trait, is distributed among the population in more or less the same way as it is in Europe or America. In all seriousness, this is a racist attempt to caricature entire peoples living in a certain region into cavemen. Fuck off Goldberg.
This is true as far as it goes, from my point of view (living and working in Israel). But I think Jeff is overlooking one thing: the fact that Americans don't always perceive withdrawal this way is a psychological and strategic ADVANTAGE for us, not the other way around.
Middle Eastern dictators, and even democracies like this one, always focus on their image, and rarely on their substance. In America it should be (and has been) the opposite. Who cares if some two-bit Afghano-Pakistani warlords think we're a bunch of pussies? At the end of the day, we're a stronger country when we stop hemorrhaging money, men, and time into Iraq, and start to have a care for our own national infrastructure.
For godsakes, don't take your advice about the Middle East from Goldberg with his bullshit pop psychology. This idea that you continue to do dumb things for fear that not continuing to do them will encourage aggression is idiotic. A. It's a recipe for continuing dumb wars forever. B. There is no evidence that people let alone nations actually think this way. Political scientists find that nations tend to judge the situation according to its own merits. If you refuse to fight for something of marginal value it does not follow that you will refuse to fight for something of greater value. The main impression pulling out of Iraq will give in the Middle East is that we will not fight forever to continue occupations of other people's countries. That sounds good to me.
"if America ducks out of Iraq in a way that makes it look like it is actually ducking out of Iraq, well, you won't want to be an American in the Middle East"
Maybe the President needs to go on-camera with Maliki, and do that Arab divorce thing, by saying "I divorce you!" three times.
If they say America is being weak, then that could imply that Arab men who divorce are weak, which I'm guessing would not go over well.
I would gladly accept not having "mercy" from the Middle East because they think we are weak in order to obtain the actual strategic strenght that would come with an Iraq withdrawal (stronger military, able to project power elsewhere, rebuild credibility, etc.). Ideally, we'd have both. But we can't. And this is a trade I'd take any day. The alternative is what? To convinve the "Middle East" that we are strong by having an overstretched military that can't respond to threats elsewhere or be used as leverage in diplomacy by staying in Iraq? To send hundreds of thousands of more troops in in order to show the "Middle East" once and for all that we are not weak? Really, what better choice do we have?
It's a weak-ass argument because there are no shortage of crazies here that hate America for its freedoms. You just can't take on 5% of the worlds population, evenly distributed. You have to find a way to tolerate (not accept) their presence, because they cannot be convinced and they cannot be exterminated. You simply need to learn to live in spite of them.
This is directed more to Jeff than to Ta-Nehisi (though really to both) but of course he doesn't have comments...
There is no mercy for the weak in the Middle East.
As a game theorist, I understand power as the willingness and ability to do certain things in certain circumstances, and the consequences flowing from the ways others take this into account in formulating their strategies. Staying in Iraq doesn't enhance our power, and withdrawing from Iraq doesn't diminish it, except in two possible respects: (a) what we do now changes what we are willing to do in the future; (b) others' perceptions of our capacity and will are manipulated. You can talk about how these things work until the cows come home, but in the end the most important point by far is that both effects are small.