In the end, our country has to
decide, just as we did in Vietnam, whether we are going to continue to send
our men and women, our military and infrastructure resources, and our tax
dollars to keep this ineffectual Iraqi rule going -- or whether, like a bad
poker hand, we finally throw the cards in and leave the game, and allow the
tribal forces on the ground to come to their own settlement.
The American people
have spoken repeatedly through regular polling data that they want us to leave
-- not precipitously, but nonetheless with dispatch.
However, the
hearings in Congress over the last two days does not give one much confidence
that this message is getting through.
By next year, under
the Bush/Patraeus plan, indeed, we'll have absolutely the same number of
troops in Iraq by next summer as we have had for the past years.
In other words --
absent the surge extras -- we are back where we started and another year will
have passed, more lives lost, more Iraqis displaced, more mayhem in the
streets, more waste of US assets.
Despite Bush's
standing at 28% in the polls, it appears unlikely Congress will do anything to
change his Iraqi policy (unlike what it did about Vietnam) leaving him as
mastermind for the next 17 months. This is a wrenching outcome.
