I dont disagree with any of your points, except that I do think the president who pulls the plug will have to pay a price politically. As you said earlier, if we leave, chaos will follow, and the person responsible for having us leave will have to answer for it.

Right now we’re giving it our best shot. If that doesn’t work and the next President decides to pull the plug (and I’m not sure that he or she will) I don’t think they will have to pay much of a price politically. But he or she will have to have an alternative strategy for how to proceed against our enemies, and right now I’m just not hearing it.

I could point in the direction of all kinds of DoD, CIA, Interational Crisis Group and other memos, and you could probably point me in the direction of other sources and we’d both end up going our own ways.

I will say, though, that I think Gen. Petraeus has exactly the right strategy in mind. The problem is, he has nowhere near the kind of resources he would need to carry it out, as he well knows. While well-intentioned, it doesn’t look to me like what we’re doing has anything like the potential for the kind of success that you have in mind. Very few things worth doing ever come easily, you say, and you know what? We’re not doing it the hard way.

Instead, what we’re doing now has all the earmarks of a plan by a president who doesn’t want to make the tough decision – either do what needs to be done to commit very serious resources to getting the job done (if it’s not already too late), or do what needs to be done to get out very soon. It looks to me like he’s going to leave that for the next president to do, and, thus, take the blame.

Look, it’s impossible for me to tell you what my experiences in Iraq were like in a couple of blog posts, but I have to say that it was possible to see some improvement. Now it is also true that the new government has been a disappointment and that our own efforts have also suffered from their fair share of mistakes, but no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.

It may be that “…no matter what we do, something bad is going to happen”, but it seems to me that that is not really the point and that we ought to be weighing the potential for both success and failure against potential courses of action. As I see it, the only way we can succeed is to keep up the fight. Very few things worth doing ever come easily.

You say: “giving in to the demands of certain leftists that America abandon the Iraqies would qualify as a literal disaster”

I’m not saying I disagree with you about that. But not giving into these demands would also qualify as a literal disaster. Leave? It’s a disaster. Stay? Disaster. Half-stay, half-leave? Disaster. That’s why this is a disaster – no matter what we do, something bad is going to happen.

That’s why George W. Bush was right on when he said in the 2000 campaign that he would never send troops in without an exit strategy. Wish he’d listened to himself.

Much respect back to you,

I do, indeed, remember the killing fields. That was caused when the king of cambodia opposed Nixon crossing into Cambodia to go after the Vietcong. Nixon’s reaction was to stage a coup d’etat, installing a right wing dictatorship. The only opposition to that dictatorship was a bizarre, far, far leftwing outfit called the Khmer Rouge, which managed to unite opposition to the dictatorship while drawing support from Mao, who wanted a country that could oppose the Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge ousted the dictatorship, came to power and started the Killing Fields. They didn’t stop the genocide until the Vietnamese invaded and threw the Khmer Rouge out.

As to current events, they speak for themselves.

What sort of “coming disaster” are you refering to? I haven’t seen any sort of thing in Iraq that could termed ‘disaster” apart, of course, from the years of Living under Saddam.

Now, giving in to the demands of certain leftists that America abandon the Iraqies would qualify as a literal disaster, inthat it would be a virtual repeat of the disaster those same leftists caused in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc. You remember, the killing fields? THAT was a disaster, and pretty much what will happen again if the current Congress and Senate leadership has it’s way in Iraq.

Respects,

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Pasto said.
—————-
The avenues swarming with gleeful Iraqis, looting in crowds now, impeding our progress….He didn’t mind the looting.

“They deserve it,” he said.
———————————

Please feel free to use this post for comments and trackbacks not related to other posts on the site. If you leave a trackback your post must include a link to this one and, as always, comments claiming the sun