One Way Or Another, USA Needs to Leave Iraq and Afghanistan

Columnist George Will is hardly a liberal and he and I often differ radically in our views, but we now are in agreement on two things: the USA needs to leave Iraq and Afghanistan which are now no win quagmires regardless of what bullsh*t the military commands may say. The USA now finds itself in roughly the same situations got themselves into going on two decades ago - we are stuck in foreign nations that have long eluded being conquered governed by utterly corrupt and self-serving governments. No amount of money expended and no amount of blood from U.S. military members will change the long existing dynamics. The first Bush administration understood this when George H.W. Bush called off the advance on Baghdad - sadly, the Chimperator never even thought of the aftermath since he was driven solely by religious fanaticism and a warped desire to avenge his daddy. Unfortunately, Barack Obama seems to have learned nothing from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and is increasing the number of U.S. troops - even as our European allies get closer and closer to recognizing reality and withdrawing their troops. Here are some highlights from Will's recent column:

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Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two months have passed, and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly transitioning to a normality free of sectarian violence. Recently, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops there, "blanched" when asked if the war is "functionally over." According to The Post's Greg Jaffe, Odierno said:

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"There are still civilians being killed in Iraq. We still have people that are attempting to attack the new Iraqi order and the move towards democracy and a more open economy. So we still have some work to do."

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No, we don't, even if, as Jaffe reports, the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops "serves as a check on Iraqi military and political leaders' baser and more sectarian instincts." After almost 6 1/2 years, and 4,327 American dead and 31,483 wounded, with a war spiraling downward in Afghanistan, it would be indefensible for the U.S. military -- overextended and in need of materiel repair and mental recuperation -- to loiter in Iraq to improve the instincts of corrupt elites. If there is a worse use of the U.S. military than "nation-building," it is adult supervision and behavior modification of other peoples' politicians.

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Already that [U.S. military] presence is irrelevant to the rising chaos, which the Iraqi government can neither contain nor refrain from participating in: Security forces seem to have been involved in the recent robbery of a state-run bank in central Baghdad.
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Two more years of U.S. military presence cannot control whether that is in Iraq's future. Some people believe the war in Iraq was not only "won," but vindicated by the success of the 2007 U.S. troop surge. Yet as Iraqi violence is resurgent, the logic of triumphalism leads here: If, in spite of contrary evidence, the U.S. surge permanently dampened sectarian violence, all U.S. forces can come home sooner than the end of 2011. If, however, the surge did not so succeed, U.S. forces must come home sooner.

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The sad truth is that the Iraq War is a disaster that need never have happened had the MSM asked hard questions, demanded hard evidence from the Chimperator and his idiot [and in the case of Cheney, insane] minions. So many lives lost and so much destruction or nothing. At least George Will has the integrity to admit he was wrong. If only the media would have learned its lesson and stop focusing on organized displays of lunacy - such as at the town hall meetings - and asked for hard facts and figures. True, that takes more work, but isn't that what journalists are paid to do?