Cliff May tells us that we should be grateful for the fact that Iraqis are grateful for the fact that we are helping them resist the Al Qaeda presence that they are resisting because they were resisting us and they were wasting effort on that resistance and failed to resist Al Qaeda who they hadn't needed to resist before we showed up because they weren't there before to be resisted.
Cliff May can take a nothing war and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.
This kind of ex post facto stuff is interesting, I suppose, in that it's very tedious. But you know, all else aside, one argument that I remember making in 2002-3 that I was well sneered at over was the argument that whatever you wanted to say about WMDs, the Bush administration was crazy, dishonest, and incompetent, and should not be trusted to run a war. We were consumed with "Bush Derangement Syndrome," you see. Still crazy after all these years, too.
The thing is, polling data suggest that most Americans have concluded that you can't go back into a war that was already obviously fucked up and make it un-fucked-up and declare "victory" and have that be believable as a hot shit wonderful thing. It's a war. Perhaps you left in your starting pitcher until the 8th inning and won 8-7 but somehow in the process half the fans died and half the team got shot or maimed: good for you! However, you are not a managerial genius. You are a dick. Wait'll people figure out that McCain was always homer announcer in manner of John Sterling or equivalent. (Sterling is also prettier than McCain. Just pointing that out.)
That it's Bush's war is a political, historical, military, and cultural fact, in America and in Iraq. Suck. On. That.
As for where do we go from here, May quotes the Wall Street Journal editorial page, where common sense is always the watchword:
[I]t is the surge, and the destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq , that has helped to demoralize al Qaeda around the world. Nothing would more embolden Zawahiri now than a U.S. retreat from Iraq, which al Qaeda would see as the U.S. version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.
It would be rather a neat trick for a destroyed and demoralized organization to become emboldened by the triumphal departure of the people who beat them.
But then again I'm glad Al Qaeda has been reduced to a fringe element that we can now handle with a strong law enforcement strategy. That's great!
