CSM asks How Will the Iraq War End. Another question that is more dear to Americans is when will the Iraq war end? But a more important question is when will the Iraq war be fiscally reasonable?
"It will take the whole term of the next president to get this right," says Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution foreign-policy expert who advocates continuing surge-level US military efforts.
Remember the Brookings Institute is a left leaning think tank in Washington DC. I didn't know that Brookings allowed anyone to advocate the surge. Are liberals starting to see Iraq in a different light now that they are on the verge of winning the White House back? Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both changed their exit plans for Iraq, or at least nuanced them to allow troops to stay longer.
One of Hollywood's liberals now believes that the US should stay in Iraq.
In a piece Angelina penned for The Washington Post newspaper titled 'A Reason to Stay in Iraq', she wrote: "What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance."
The sentiment that is growing seems to be that the US has maybe not won in Iraq, but is capable of maintaining order. The maturity Jolie displays is that whether you agreed with going into Iraq or not is irrelevant at this point in history. Although Pope John Paul II was very much against the US going into Iraq, but once the US went into Iraq the Vatican changed its tune. "'The child has been born," [The Vatican] declared...'It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must be reared and educated.'" The point that Obama is missing is that his, I would have never gone in the first place, doesn't answer the question, what do we do now?
The problem is that the Iraq war will never end the way Americans expect it to end. The USS Missouri isn't going to sail into the Persian Gulf for Muqtada Sadr, al Qeda, and other enemies of Iraq to surrender to the US.
The corner has turned in Iraq and the US is on the way to setting up the Iraqis for victory in their own country. Now that the US has identified the village elders as the center of gravity in Iraq and the village elders have identified al Qaeda and sectarian violence as the enemies of Iraq, Iraq will continue to show progress.
When will the Iraq war end? It already has and it never will all in the same. The continuum of the state of Iraq will continue to slip towards peace at such a gradual state that at no point will anybody be able to say, "today, we won the Iraq war."
Perhaps the Iraq war will end when the the last US troops leave Iraq. This isn't a likely endpoint either. The US will have a military presence in Iraq for decades. Maybe it was the initial redeployment of troops. If that is the case the war is in its final stages.
To answer when will the Iraq war end, will require decades after the actual war ends and even then analysts and experts will disagree as to when the Iraq war ended.
2 comments:
but what if hillare or barry are elected...don't they promise to in effect bug out immediately? what will happen if either of these disasters befall the USA?
Good question. But my answer will probably surprise you. If Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama get elected, they probably won't act much different than McCain. Clinton talks of a Quick Reaction Strike Force and Samantha Powers who was an Obama foreign policy adviser said Obama's timetable was a best case scenario.
If Obama or Clinton get into office I see the realities of foreign policy overcoming their ridiculous "out in 60 days" diatribe. The "out in 60 days," mantra is only a, get elected by the extreme left, soundbite.
The folks who will be sorely disappointed by Clinton's or Obama's actions in office will be the extreme left Cindy Sheehans of the country. Just like they were overwhelmingly disappointed with Pelosi's failure to end the war in Iraq.
If you remember in 2006 the Democratic congress was elected partly by the, "get out of Iraq now," club.
The reality is that no politician wants to be labeled with losing a war. History will show that Bush went into Iraq with faulty intel. But it will also show that by the end of Bush's second term he was on the verge of setting up a strong democratic American ally in the middle of the Middle East. If Clinton or Obama abandons a fledgling Middle East democracy, history will crucify them as one of the worst presidents ever.
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