Stuck In Iraq

Well Kerry said it and despite the source it seems more true with each passing day - we are stuck in Iraq. First, it is doubtful that we are getting enough of the news from Iraq but the level of violence is clearly worse now than at anytime in the past. The violence is not random, rather it appears to be calculated to drive the civil war to ever higher levels. There are apparently at least two campaigns of violence there which seem to be more problematic than Al Quaeda-- Sunnis against Shiites, and Shiites perhaps for national dominance against Sunnis and to a lesser extent against Kurds. Yet, our government wishes to revisit the theme of fighting terrorists over there rather than over here-- seems like that denial thing at work again. In Vietnam, the historical revision suggested that the so-called enemy there was not ideology but ordinary people fighting an invader. In Iraq, we clearly are an invader. Clearly, we will be blamed for much of the destruction. Clearly, this nearly incredible loss of life has the potential to foster a real brand of terrorism for there has been an enormous loss of life, even the more conservative estimates exceed 100,000. This is a horribly excessive price to pay to take down a government as weak as the Saddam-Baathists.
The costs to the US in the range of 200 Billion for next year for Afghan-Iraq( 600 Millions per day) is also a horrible use of national resources--most of us would rather see that money educate all of our children or universal healthcare or to create new industries here. It's like a menu that offers Chicken soup or the e coli special--and somehow we don't choose the soup.

Iraq Commission Disappoints....

Well if you had low expectations concerning the contribution of the Iraq Commission you might still have been disappointed by its Report. The primary value of the report may well be in its appraisal of the Iraq policy and how much domestic political concerns have apparently affected it. It was startling to see the images and sheer levels of violence portrayed in the Report which appear in stark contrast to the information which has previously been provided to the press and public.
The public would have long ago concluded that Iraq had fallen into a grave and divisive civil war from which there is no apparent recovery based on the sheer breathtaking level of violence. The public would have had a very different reaction to the costs of the war in terms of Iraqi deaths and casualties.. One finds it difficult to imagine an entire world of governments and resources could not have developed a more effective and less deadly method to dismantle the puny military under Saddam's control at the time of the invasion.
The commission disappoints in its primary focus on the domestic political process by calling for resolution of the deployment issue in advance of the presidential primaries in 2008. There is a body of well founded opinion in the American public that much of what has transpired in Iraq: the timing of the invasion, the desperate use of flawed intelligence, the uncorroborated assumption of a Saddam role in 9/11; was in its totality dominated by the re-election of President Bush. This, if even minimally true, would be an omission of Presidential responsibility of an historic proportion. However, the Commission essentially legitimizes this approach by its own politically inspired sense of urgency-- a premature politically motivated onset to this war could certainly be made worse by an artificial timetable for resolution similarly tied to the election cycle. All in all, the new Congress should be even more interested in developing it's own factual basis for Iraq policy development and evaluation--the national mandate of November, 2006 seems to require it.