At some point, one has to consider whether “coalition” is really the right word to describe the countries participating in the war in Iraq. The latest country to drop out of the “coalition of the willing” is the Netherlands.
The Dutch cabinet has decided to bring home the 1,350 Dutch troops in Iraq in March next year, confirming a decision first made in June, the Dutch news agency ANP cited Defense Minister Henk Kamp as saying on Friday.
The Netherlands first sent troops to Iraq in August 2003 and won parliamentary approval this summer to extend their stay until March 2005.
Iraq’s interim administration wants to hold elections in January despite mounting violence, and the Netherlands has come under increasing U.S. and British pressure to keep its troops there after March.
Foreign Minister Bernard Bot recently suggested that might be possible in unforeseeable circumstances, but Kamp said the cabinet had ruled that out.
The Dutch announcement comes less than two weeks after Hungary announced that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. And that’s just November. Over the last few months, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the Philippines have all withdrawn troops.
“You forgot” Poland, the fourth largest contributor of troops, has announced that its 2,400 troops are on the way out, as are soliders from Thailand, Singapore, Moldova, and Bulgaria. Of course, when John Kerry and John Edwards suggested that Bush’s coalition was really just down to us, the British, and the Australians, Bush and Cheney insisted the Dems were wildly off-base.
And, like The Gadflyer’s Tom Schaller, I really can’t explain why this isn’t bigger news. The Dutch announcement, for example, was widely ignored by the major U.S. media over the weekend. I know the announcement came on a Friday afternoon, but isn’t this a fairly significant development?