Multiple Choice
The Pentagon says we three choices of strategies to improve the situation in Iraq:
A. Go Big
B. Go Long
C. Go Home
Last week during congressional hearings, General Abizaid told Senator McCain:
“We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect. But when you look at the overall American force pool that’s available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps.”
Looks like Option A is off the table, for realists anyway.
Henry Kissinger had this to say about the possibility of acheiving a military victory in Iraq:
“If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”
And you may ask yourself: Why “go long” if you can’t “win” anyway?
Bush keeps saying, “We’ll succeed unless we quit,” but he never says how long he thinks we’ll have to stay in the game. Given his administration’s record with predicting outcomes in Iraq, I’d have to say that “long” means very, very long. We can’t afford that, so it looks like Option B is off the table.
That leaves us with Option C: Go Home. I’m all for that. The sooner the better.
