Ok, let's be honest. We all know what's going on.
The Democrats and the Republicans all know.
It's a shell game.
Bush isn't going to change a thing about his so-called 'strategy' in Iraq until he's walked out of the White House. We all know that. This charade of troop withdrawal is simply that - it's the Democrats playing to the polls. They see the war has become 'unpopular' (which makes one wonder when it was ever 'popular') so now they're getting worked up. But not really.
The Republicans called it political theater, but frankly it looked more like a sleep-over to me. A bunch of cots and some pizza doesn't really measure up the the suffering that our troops are enduring, or the citizens who are dying.
The Democrats - using their best marketing muscle - stood for hours in front of signs that said; "let us vote."
The might as well have said - "it's not our fault."
Everyone is posturing for '08. And frankly, lots of us who've attended too many protested, written too many letters, and called our Congressmen are just plain out of ideas. So '08 is the moment that we're all setting our sites on, the moment we can 'change things.' But wait, not so fast. Do we really think that's going to work?
To date, 3,605 US soldiers have died. Over the past three months more than 300 American soldiers were killed. The best reports of civilian casualties are "tens of thousands."
Presuming no change before November 2008, 14 months means another 1,400 soldiers die. Minimum.
Then, presuming that Hillary/Edwards/Obama/Gore/Richardson/? gets elected, two more months before they're in office. Another 200 deaths. 1,600 - bringing the projected death toll to 5,205.
And then what?
Secretly, Bush would love to hand the Democrats a demoralized and over extended military, a defense budget run amok, and a global political situation that has any number of bad scenarios waiting in the wings. All it will take is one attack, one incident on US soil, that Bush can point to the Democratic pull out as the causal factor. And, if something happens before the election, a Democrat will be hard pressed to 'respond' by withdrawing troops.
We're boxed in.
They're running the clock.
It was never a "surge" - and we all know it. It was an escalation - and that is what it will remain until Congress replaces theatrics with a genuine sense of a anger and a willingness to do what must be done.
There is one ONE solution. Waiting for a new President to ride in on a white horse to the White House isn't going to happen. It's more likely that a Democratically Elected President - will arrive with an unfixable mess on her/his hands..... and be implementing a Draft. (Now, won't that both serve the Bush agenda and forever tattoo hypocrite and flip-flopper on the ass of the Democratic Party).
Here's what is really going on - Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. troops to the south of Baghdad, told the AP:
"I worry about this talk about reducing or terminating the surge." "It's going to take through [this] summer, into the fall, to defeat the extremists in my battle space, and it's going to take me into next spring and summer to generate this sustained security presence."
Please read this again. Does anyone reading this - Democrat, Republican, Military Family, or Presidential Candidate actually think there is an end game in this? That 'winning' is an option? Hell, we don't even know who the enemy is.
What we do know is that Bush is running the clock. And if General Petraeus, Discusses War in Iraq doesn't report back that things are improving, and we need to stay until spring at the least, then he'll be just another General taking early retirement. Bush has said repeatedly we must listen to our Military leaders, but then unceremoniously fired them when they didn't lip-sync to the Administrations Iraq War glee club.
The other evening, ABC News presented some of the most heartbreaking footage yet, shot by a british reporter
Heartbreaking because it's hard to see who's winning here. The soldiers, who are Patriotic but feel they're without a clear mission or path home, the Iraqis who are living each day in a battlefield that is their backyard, or the cab driver who was shot dead turning around to pick up a fare.
It's time to stop the clock.
Congress has plenty of ways to turn the tide, and put the Bush Administration on the Defensive. But it's going to take a political will that hasn't yet taken hold.
The American people will support, even embrace, Democrats who are willing to call Bush a lame duck. His policies failed. His pre-war intelligence, fraudulently flawed. His Senior Staff, pathologically dishonest. His Attorney General, a political hack, and his pardon of Scooter Libby a blatant act of Obstruction of Justice.
It's time.