Decius wrote:
We should have changed tactics two to three years ago, and we would have if the presidential election had been carried differently. There was, in fact, every reason to change horses in the middle of that particular stream. The horses did not change, and so the strategy did not change, until after the 2006 election. You cannot undo the fact that we went to war in Iraq by pulling out. You have a potentially viable change in tactics that was the fruit of the fact that people finally got around to firing some Republicans. Now you might have an opportunity to do things right going forward, and you're not interested. You're not going to take it. You are doing everything you can to shoot it down before you know whether or not its viable. Why? Because you are too trapped by the extremism of your own political rhetoric to make the right decision?

If the surge report is positive and yet the US pulls out of Iraq anyway it will be, frankly, just as irrational and tragic as the decision to go in in the first place. Perhaps thats the history we deserve, but it just goes to show you that it really, deeply, doesn't matter which political party is in charge.

I'm going to take a different tack here. The surge may well decrease violence, but the purpose is to decrease the violence so the Iraqi government has breathing room to get their shit together. If the violence goes down, but that doesn't happen, then the surge has failed whether it was militarily successful or not.

Given the events of the past six weeks, the complete pullout from the government by the Sunnis, the pullout by the Sadr faction, the damning of the Maliki government from all sides, and the murders of two provincial governors, whether the surge is militarily successful or not, is not relevant. It has not had the political effect it was intended to provide, if anything, things have gone from pretty shitty to hog heaven.

The invasion of Iraq was a complete botch by the civilian heads at DoD saying we could do it on the cheap, based on a lie (just where are those WMDs?). Asking someone to be the last guy to die for a mistake as John Kerry put it 35 years ago was bad enough. Asking someone to be the last guy to die to cover up a lie? I'm not even sure where to start with that.

RE: Obsidian Wings: Bush's Speech