The Incompleat Curmudgeon

Here we go again

“All we need,” says the administration, “is a little more time. We’re making progress. Things are better now. Violence is down. Just be patient a little while longer”

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard the administration say these things I could run for president, and probably win because I’d out-spend everybody else. (Don’t worry, I don’t have those dimes and I wouldn’t have the job anyway.)

The thing is, nobody except the administration and a few of its apologists even pretends to believe those talking points. In fact there are quite a few people in the administration who don’t believe them either. But hey, ya gotta make a living, right?

Last week the president, showing his disconnect from reality and his contempt for the American people, said that things were so good we were bringing troops home. The fact is, Mr. President, that almost everybody knows that we’re out of troops, and the troops you’re bringing home have been there so long they must return.

And, again showing his contempt for the American people, the president announced that he was going to keep us in Iraq, dying and getting wounded, past the end of his presidency. That way he won’t have to take the blame for what happens when we leave. He thinks.

But I have news for you, Mr. President. The American people, and the historians who will document your presidency, know that you invaded Iraq without reason, that you mulishly insisted that we stay there until we gained some undefined “victory,” and that you have now decided that we must stay there until you leave office.

The fact is that we have already lost the war we should not have started. The surge is a failure, the Iraqi army is a laugh, the Iraqi police are as sectarian as the population, and even more Anti-American, the government has made no measurable progress in bridging the sectarian political divide.

American casualties have increased every month since before the surge, and the number of attacks on Iraqi civilians has remained flat. Sectarian violence hasn’t really decreased, unless you use the definition General Petraeus apparently uses, and if you do that, criminal violence has increased as sectarian violence has decreased.

The president boasts about success in Al Anbar province, where the local sheiks have joined American forces in fighting Al Qaeda groups. But these sheiks are Sunnis, and they don’t get along with the Iraqi national government or the Iraqi army. In fact US troops have had to physically intervene to prevent attacks on our Sunni allies by our Iraqi army allies. The national government, with reason, worries that the Sunni militias we are arming in Al Anbar will turn into insurgents if and when Al Qaeda is suppressed. But that may be a while: last week Al Qaeda killed the most important Sheik in Al Anbar.

If we stay in Iraq we’re going to find U.S. forces under attack by Al Anbar Sunni militias using weapons we furnished them.

The Government Accountability Office (the non-partisan investigative agency of the Congress) says the Iraqis have failed to meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks for political progress and security. (Under administration pressure, the GAO upgraded its grade for two of the benchmarks from “did not meet” to “partially met.”) The report points out that “the constitutional review process is not complete, and laws on de-Ba’athification, oil revenue sharing, provincial elections, and amnesty have not passed.” It says that “violence remains high, the number of Iraqi security forces capable of conducting independent operations has declined, and militias are not disarmed.” And it adds that “funding for reconstruction has been allocated but is unlikely to be spent.”

Well. We’re not getting anywhere militarily (and everybody admits that there’s no military solution for Iraq). We’re not getting anywhere politically. We’re there only because Bush wants us to be there. And the sad thing is we’re likely to stay there until we get a new president. Because the Democrats don’t have the guts, or the confidence in the good sense of the American people, to do what they ought to do: cut off funding for the war and force the administration to bring our troops home.

Write your senators. Write your congressman. Write the Democratic leadership in congress. Tell them to stop the funding for this awful, unnecessary war.

There’s a link on the right that makes it easy.