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?
What a bunch of maroons these Democrats are. Whining about a war that's already over. A new reality, a new stability, a new -- dare we say it? -- victory!!!...and yet Democrats still act like we have still hundreds of thousands of soldiers over in Iraq, and we're still paying hundreds of billions of dollars to fund this occupation, and still seeing American soldiers killed and maimed for life.
Not to mention those silly Iraqis, who seem to think that they're still getting killed! Dumbbells.
Don't they read NEWSWEEK? Don't they realize that Fareed Zakaria has been known to discuss their country with the likes of Cokie Roberts, George Will, and George Stephanopolous?
Oy.
Zakaria is but one Beltway wanker... and not even the worst offender, at that. But for the past five years we have been sold the bill of goods that we are at war in Iraq, when for most of this time we were actually occupying a country that we invaded, and whose leader we overthrew handily (quite predictably so).
There is no "over" in this Iraq adventure, as Zakaria blithely asserts -- largely or not. Not until the last American soldier steps off Iraqi soil.
Thanks for the Beltway concern trollism though, Fareed. You're a genius.
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