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.
