Since we overwhelmingly voted last week for phased withdrawal from Iraq, and since the Iraqis, in every poll of public opinion in that country, are even more eager for us to leave, our president has decided on one last push, by which he means sending even more troops (20,000) to Iraq, and then leaving in a year or so. My question is this:

How is “one last push” substantively different from setting a date for withdrawal? Won’t the various ethnic militias now know that all they need to do is wait for us to leave? Wasn’t it this very fact that supposedly made it impossible for us to leave during the last three years?

It seems to me that “one last push” is the same thing as withdrawal, and that we’re asking those 20,000 troops, as well as those already there, to risk their lives for another couple of Friedmans as a palliative for an administration that is unable to admit to mistakes and correct its course. We’re doing this in order to save the political image of George Bush and the Republican Party.

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Posted by Ben Brothers at 9:48 pm, 15 November 2006 and filed under War and Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.