1 Boring Old Man

I’m not willing to fall into the Clinton/Obama trap. It’s not particularly pretty. From what I just saw on the news, they’re using the Republican Talking Points against each other. They both really want to be President, and they’re not likely to come together "for the good of the Party." They’re going to fight to the death, it seems. Let’s hope it’s not the death of the Party. Were I a Republican political strategist, I would keep McCain off the streets, and take notes on what Hillary and Barak are saying. It seems, frankly, pretty pointless to me, but for each of them, it’s the fight of their life. Problem is, the real fight of their lives isn’t until this Fall. Nothing any of us can do about it, except fret.

The creativity is from Dana [or her writers]. See, renewed violence is not really renewed violence, it’s opportunities for the Iraq Security forces to prove that they can fight. That interpretation is really creative, and too far fetched to comment on. Sometimes, it feels like the Administration thinks that those of us who criticize the War in Iraq, or speak despairingly about "the Surge," are actually hoping for failure, cheering for the enemy. In my case, that’s not true. My criticism is something else. I think that the "Insurgents" are fighting us, the Americans, for being in the Middle East, making war. That’s what al Qaeda was about. Osama bin Laden returned from helping drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, and saw Americans in Saudi Arabi, left over from the Gulf War. So he started an anti-US organization – al Qaeda. I think that we have more than enough justification to hunt him down. He’s a danger to the U.S. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to the loud message. We may have a legitimate reason to be concerned for our safety, but we don’t have a legitimate right to try to shape countries in our own image.

If I were an Iraqi, I think I might be disposed to want the U.S. out of Iraq too, whether I was glad Hussein was gone or not. So I’m in the camp that thinks that our presence in Iraq is as much a part of the problem as al Qaeda. I have no idea what to do about it. I see problems staying. I see problems leaving. But the biggest problem I see is in continuing this ridiculous rhetoric about winning. Instead of sending more troops, I’d like for us to send diplomats to talk to everyone there to see if we can find a way to get out [which they want] in a way that deals with the specter of "Terrorists will take over Iraq." I’m sure that we’d get a lot further with that if we had leaders who were thinking about solving the problem, rather than what Karl Rove said last week.

Pursuing that decade-old goal of the Neoconservatives is a dead end. It’s unclear what the Iraqis want, or if the notion of "Iraqis" as a unity is even rational. But it’s absolutely clear that being a "counterweight to mullahs" or a "center for reform … throughout the Middle East" is not what’s on their minds right now. That’s a naive fantasy of our pie-in-the-sky leaders who need to be gone. Were I either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton, I would not know exactly what to say in a campaign about this horrible war. But I do know what I’d think. "If I get elected, I’m sure not going to have a foreign policy called The Bush Doctrine that’s based on America taking over for the U.N. and playing muscle-man for the world running around the globe invading people." I would think, "My only goal is to get us out of Iraq safely. My plan is to join the world community to deal with the problem of Terrorism. Whatever Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz had in mind, it’s not going to have any effect on what I do. That was a horrid experiment in American Tyrrany and I’m going to have no part of it. I’m ending this nightmare in whatever way I can. And I’m going to eat all the crow it takes to get us back to sanity."

So long as our leaders are chasing the dream Rove was talking about, we’re stalemated at best, more likely doomed…