We’re Fighting the Wrong War (Democrats Hit With New Reality-The War Has Largely Ended..)

'What remains is a negative objective, stopping the war from spilling over, within Iraq but also outside it.'

Pity the U.S. presidential candidates. They had their positions on Iraq all worked out by last summer and have repeated them consistently ever since. But events on the ground have changed dramatically, and their rhetoric feels increasingly stale. They're fighting the Iraq War all right, but it's the wrong one.

The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to "ending the war" and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

From 2003 to 2005 the war in Iraq was defined by an insurgency. After the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006, it became largely a sectarian conflict. Now the dominant feature of the war is the proliferation of local ceasefires across the country. The real questions that candidates need to answer are these: How do they interpret this new reality? What would they do to maintain the new stability? What does all this mean for U.S. foreign and military policy in the next few years?

Newsweek senior editor, Fareed Zakaria and Robert Kaplan, a highly respected foreign affairs journalist both attended a highly criticized secret meetingin November of 2001 by Paul Wolfowitz. The two journalists, along with a handful of unnamed others collaborated to produce the report that, in Kaplan's words to the New York Times, assembled "a forceful summary of some of the best pro-war arguments at the time."

Confidentiality agreements were signed as a condition of attending the meeting.

Now, this latest Jan 28, Newsweek article by Zakaria brings more strong criticism down on himself again from some of the Wesley Clark fans over on VetVoice: ..."feel free to shut your pie hole with regard to whether this war is over or not", writes Brandon Friedman in his piece: "Zakaria Makes Ass of Self; Says "War Has Largely Ended".

In South Carolina a poll was taken on what was the most important issue in the campaign. It was not the war, it was the "economy stupid" that came out #1. Says the NY Times:

"Voters in the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday said they were more concerned about the nation’s economy than they were about illegal immigration, the war in Iraq or terrorism, according to a National Election Pool conducted as people left polling places across the state."

The wheel goes round and round and where she stops....

Don't Forget Our Troops!

I only wish we had achieved this success three years ago--sad thing is, it was doable.

Well, maybe not.

I read somewhere that the young guys in Iraq, the Iraqis who hadn't been in the army or the Republican Guards, were disposed to come out and fight simply because they hadn't, and because not to have fought would have been dishonorable --- never mind the policy questions, or whose side you wanted to be on, or all that. It was almost a Pavlov's-dog reflex. U.S. Army shows up, the young guys all want to go out and fight.

Well, they fought, they lost. They joined jihadi or Ba'athist or Shiite outfits, even Al Q'aeda, and they fought. They lost. So now, honor satisfied, they're ready to settle down and listen to Plan B.

Which is kicking out Al Q'aeda and making some sort of political settlement.

Not all of them are there yet -- some Shiites in the south may not be. But the Sunnis pretty much are, and the Kurds seem to be pretty much satisfied, if the leadership up there can convince the subordinate, younger commanders to quit poking the Turks. That's absolutely the last thing anyone needs now, is a major row with the Turks.

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