To infinity, and beyond!

Rod,

I basically agree with you except it isn't bait and switch per say. More of s stall, like a 4 corners offense.

They know that there is nothing we can do and at some point we have to leave and then all Hell breaks loose and the slow burning civil war becomes a full on civil war.

The goal is simply to make sure that doesn't happen until January '09, preferably in a way that can be blamed on the Democrats. Then the same neo-con and right wing fools who have been wrong about foreign policy since basically 1945 can trot out the same stabbed in the back by liberals narrative about how we were on the verge of winning, blah blah blah while calling for another ill advised war (China, somewhere in Latin America?)

The Generals have their tactics. The public has to have theirs also. We have to keep pressure on these guys. A policy that takes years to work is unacceptable to the public. THEY HAVE TO BE MADE TO UNDERSTAND THAT. We've already been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II. Two concepts are solidifying from modern U.S. military involvement. 1) You cannot win a humane war, and 2) A long drawn out war will not be supported by the U.S. public. The old timers were right: You win a war by destroying the enemy. If you can't stomach the nastiness that entails you should avoid war at almost any cost.

"We've already been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II."

But we're still in Germany. The thing that fustrates me more than anything else is the apparent inability of Americans to think beyond the next election cycle. We are facing an enemy that has, in one form or another, under one leadership or another, been fighting the same war for well over a millenia. I haven't heard anyone come up with long term strategies or solutions to this. They think generationally, We think weve lost a thre and a half thousand over six years and its time to quit (Not counting the three thousand lost on the first day we became aware we were in the war). It may be that getting out of Iraq would be a good thing. From a cold blooded perspective, letting the Radical Shi'a and the Wahhabi kill each other while we take the time to prepare has its pluses. BUT, I really want to hear a discussion on how we will deal with this war, because we can't just quit, the other side wont let us. So, how do we conduct it? Assuming we can't end it without becoming genocidal monsters, what groundwork do we lay so that future generations can continue this fight and remain free? So, you bring the troops home. What next?

Realistically, we will, at a minimum, have elite special ops intelligence operatives and shooters based in and actively working in nations around the world whether we are at war with those nations or not. Including Iraq and Iran. This has proven to be the most effective way to dismantle terrorist networks and the only way terrorists can evade them seems to be to hide in primitive no go areas like tribal Pakistan and shun cell phones and radios. I really hope we don't stop these operations if you all are successful in the Bring the Troops Home push. The question of nation building aside, I can picture our SOP forces truly being gutted and Americans turning isolationist and sticking our heads in the sand. I figure you can figure out what will happen if we adopt that posture.