Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."
If we're not winning and we're not losing, we're just fooling around in place. Newt Gingrich made a point on ABC's Sunday show recently that we had two options in Iraq -- rely on the local structure and have a minimal American presence, as we did in Afghanistan, or dismantle the structure and put massive American forces there. We chose instead a disastrous mixture of the two -- dismissing the locals but trying to maintain a light footprint. Gingrich has the advantage of being an expert iin hindsight, but that sounds about right. I've been critical of those who can't get over Vietnam and base all their foreign-policy opinions on our experience in that debacle, but it's clear we're still struggling with an important lesson Vietnam should have taught us: Don't go to war unless you have to, and if you do, don't just fool around with it.
Comments
Agreed Leo. I would be more supportive of this war if we were going after the people who actually perpetuated the 9/11 attack but we aren't. By the way that person is Osama Bin Laden who is known to be hiding out in Afgahnastan somewhere not in Iraq. Saddam is no better for what he did to his people but that didn't give us the right to attack their country. Not winning and not losing? It's one or the other. Now Bush wants to send even more innocent people to get killed and kill others. Impeach him.
I will agree that if we stay there, we need to commit what's necessary to get the job done. That's always been one of our problems since I can remember - we seem to fight wars with a sense of a set of rules, while the other side does what they want, we'll never win in that circumstance. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a solution that can be had by the military staying there, even though there are some numbers of outside forces poking everyone with sticks, there are also a fair number of people involved in what can only be described as a civil war - and we have no business involved in that. And, yes, I will use all the same, old, tired reasons. Hindsight tells us we screwed up by going there in the first place, no, that doesn't mean we have a moral reason to stay there, we do have thousands of people in this country who need things, and we're suffering a horrible toll in lives. So, why are we still there ?
It concerns me too that our own borders are porous while we debate more security at the Mexico border. Our troops should be on US soil defending their own homeland.
Amen to that, ... (and, yes, Leo, I know there are legal issues with that - we need to fix it.)