Flutterby™! : Iraq amuck 2005-01-13 19:01:47.700832+00

Iraq amuck

2005-01-13 19:01:47.700832+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

I don't want to turn this into a political blog, and I don't have time to be really thoughtful about this, but it bothers me that 16 House Democrats are calling for a complete withdrawal from Iraq. Unfotunately, now that we've screwed that situation up, we pretty much have to be there until it's fixed, and "until it's fixed" might not be "democratic elections", because it'd really suck to have Saddam Hussein's regime replaced with, say, something like Iran has right now.

On the other hand, it's worth going back and re-reading the incompetence and/or lies of Paul Wolfowitz testifying before the House Budget Committee about the potential costs of invading Iraq to know that the planning for this little escapade was woefully inadequate, and the consequences weren't reasonably considered.

"Be there until it's fixed" implies that there's something we can do, while we're there, that will fix it. The best option I can see, at this point, is to set a few objectives that are unquestionably feasible (e.g., protect Kurdish autonomy in the north, assuming that the Kurds still like us), pull back to positions that allow us to achieve those objectives, and then say "As long as you don't do X, Y, or Z, the country is yours. Have a nice civil war."

And from a perfectly cynical point of view, I'm not sure I want

the Democrats to take the initiative for a withdrawal from Iraq. If the Democrats get enough Republican defectors to pull the US out of Iraq against the President's wishes, then the wingnuts will tell us for the next twenty years that We Could Have Won Iraq If It Weren't For Those Damn Liberals. I would much rather have the Republican party own the consequences of the Iraq mess, the way Bush Senior owned his tax increase.

I think we are creating a Gaza strip and worse in Iraq, and excuse me for being realistic about the whole thing. ;-)