E Pluribus Unum

by shep

Reality check #1: there is no one to “surrender” to in Iraq, so you mendacious Republican traitors who claim that getting our soldiers out of being target dummies in a low-level civil war between native Sunnis and Shiites is tantamount to surrender, please let me know where I can meet you to beat some f*cking sense into you (or beat you to death, as necessary, as a service to our country).

Reality check #2: we are not leaving Iraq in most of our lifetimes. Even the most hysterically opposed Democratic “withdrawal” funding legislation calls for us to maintain action against al Qaeda, which, by itself, will fulfill the basic wet dreams of the neocons for American troops to occupy Iraqi bases for at least a generation.

Reality check #3: regardless of what legislation is passed, we will have no choice, morally or practically, other than to react to what happens on the ground. That means intervening militarily against: 1) systematic terrorism against civilians, 2) ethnic cleansing, or 3) open warfare that threatens access to Iraqi oil or to spill over to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, or, all of the above.

Reality check #4: there is no “war” to be “won” in Iraq. It’s about damage control. Some grownups will have to step forward and start to explain to the American people what our new mission is, what strategies have the greatest likelihood of keeping it from becoming the end of civilization as we have known it, and what we should expect the cost of those strategies to be.

We know that Republicans won’t be those leaders; they are literally insane. Unless Democrats start to ignore Republicans frames and go straight to the reality-based truth, we have no hope of building a rational, publicly supported Iraq policy.

While I agree that Congress should use threatened pullouts to tell the Iraqis that we will not continue the status quo and should also force us to end our current occupation strategy, the current “in to win” or “withdraw our troops” policy debate is, quite simply, simplistic and stupid.