We Can't Stay Forever

Staying forever. Based on what I read, that seems to be the Republican position on Iraq.

I crossposted my entry on learning the lessons of Iraq (spoiler alert: we won't) to the LJDemocrats Live Journal group, and a regular conservative poster there responded.

He said, "The number sent is irrelevant as it's the jobs they perform, missions tasked, and competancy of those in field that matters most. Looking at the numbers, the surge seemed to have put a dent in terrorist activities. All violent activity is down since February." I then pointed him to a relevant link showing statistics indicating the much-touted decrease in violence reports are selective and misleading. He responded noting that, yes, there has still been some drop in the numbers at this time.

I responded by urging him not to ignore to bigger picture and by saying this...

Sending in tens of thousands of new soldiers (note: actually, they're not new soldiers, we're just recycling the old ones... in some cases, even the injured ones) into Iraq-- Baghdad specifically-- may indeed result initially in lower violence in those specific, targeted areas. More cops on the street = less crime.

But, it's also still a whack-a-mole strategy. We've had similar short-term 'success' with previous escalations. We can scare a few baddies out of Baghdad, but they'll just set up shop in the nearby areas. And then, as soon as we leave, or decrease our numbers, they will come right back. They can wait us out. They have the numbers and home-court advantage. Unless we are planning to stay indefinitely and just have the U.S. military officially become the Baghdad Police Department, that is an inevitability.

Iraqi forces won't be any better prepared in one year, two years, or five years to handle things without us than they would be in 2007. After all, we've been hearing since 2004 how they're almost there and then-- surprise, surprise-- we read a report a week later saying maybe one or two units may be ready. Eventually.

We are not fighting a foreign enemy or defending our vital interests or our direct security or anything of the sort. We are defending Iraqis from other Iraqis. It's not our war. It never should've been our war in the first place, and many tried to warn against this very outcome to many deaf ears.

Yes, our leaving will be a bumpy ride, but that will always be the case. It'll be the case tomorrow, next month, next year, next decade. And it's best that we begin the tough road out now while we still have a somewhat functioning military left (and living, intact soldiers; and a treasury) than have to chopper the last soldiers out in a desperate flee five years from now, when god knows what other outside concerns we'll then be unprepared to deal with.

But conservatives have no answer for that, at least none that isn't simply a series of platitudes about American resolve and false cries of 'fighting them there instead of here'. And, in his last response, the aforementioned poster accused me of advocating surrender. Ending the war at any point to them is surrender. They're waiting for a grand, black-and-white victory (the kind they thought they had almost four years ago when the President landed on that aircraft carrier). Real life doesn't always work that way, and they'll be waiting a long, long time before they find anything they'd feel comfortable calling 'victory'. At this point, I'd define being able to get out with minimal collateral damage as 'victory'.

So I thusly assume that they intend to stay forever. Let's hope the people in Washington who believe otherwise will soon grow the balls necessary to rescue us from this cycle.