1 Boring Old Man

Kissinger Says Victory in Iraq Is Not Possible

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who regularly advises President Bush on Iraq, said today that a full military victory was no longer possible there. He thus joined a growing number of leading conservatives openly challenging the administration’s conduct of the war and positive forecasts for it.

“If you mean, by ‘military victory,’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible,” Mr. Kissinger told BBC News.

In Washington, a leading Republican supporter of the war, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said American troops in Iraq were “fighting and dying for a failed policy.”

But Mr. McCain continued to argue vigorously for a short-term surge in American forces, and he gained a vocal ally in Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another influential Republican, who said, “We’re going to lose this war if we don’t adjust quickly.”

The comments came at a sensitive time, just as the Bush administration, deeply frustrated by the persistent chaos in Iraq — where more than 50 people died in violence today — and stung by Republicans’ electoral setbacks on Nov. 7, has undertaken an intense search for new approaches to the war.

Mr. Kissinger, in the BBC interview, said the United States must open talks with Iraq’s neighbors, pointedly including Iran, if progress is to be achieved in Iraq. Mr. Bush has said the United States is ready for such talks, but only if Iran moves to halt its nuclear enrichment work. American officials say low-level talks with Syria have produced little progress.

But Mr. Kissinger also said that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would have “disastrous consequences,” leaving not only Iraq but neighboring countries with large Shiite populations destabilized for years.

All of Saddam’s atrocities and saber rattling were how he held things in check. He was a pro. We’re rookies. There will be no victory. There will be no stabilization. That’s not what they’re about right now. Thanks for weighing in Henry, but no cigar. Everyone’s still saying that the war wasn’t conducted well. True or not, it doesn’t matter too much in the long run to them. It shouldn’t have been fought in the first place. Like Viet Nam, there is no solution – at least no solution from our perspective. It’s like the laws of thermodynamics:

1. You can’t win
2. You can’t even break even
3. You have to lose