Go Home? Hmmm.....?

The previous entry talked about going Big. Nobody wants to go big or long.

We have gone long, longer the WWII, and spent a god awful amount of money and blood to create a state that is just shy of anarchic. Nobody wants to send more troops. Only a few diehards see staying in the current form, as a solution to anything. We are not making the mideast safer, or less unstable. We have not defeated the enemy that hit us on 9/11. The Iraq War is not indefinitely sustainable. If another crisis hit us our armed forces are thin, over worked, and burned out.

A democratic republic can decide to end a war whenever it wants. We wish to end this one now.

But…

The war will not end when we leave Iraq. It will continue there and millions will suffer because of our hubris, imperial stupidity, and lack of forsight. When we leave Iraq and it is not stable, or democratic, or free of terrorism, there will have to be a royal comeuppance for the people that lead us into this farce.

But…

There will be no comeuppance. They will go and write there books, and become pundits on Fox News, and either retire as millionaires, or work for fortune 500’s an retire as billionaires. The soldiers will come home, and there will be no parade. They will not be spat on or ridiculed. But they will, in their hearts, be fuming over the waste. Some will agree that the war was a farce, the height of vain glory, but others will see this as a sign of American weakness. They will not put down the sword but keep it at the ready.

Losing a war like this is what dictatorships of the future are made of. We tend to forget that we are a nation too. And that the rules apply to us aswell as Iraq. Two nations will suffer the consequences of pulling out of Iraq and leaving it a disaster.

This is not 1975 and Iraq is not Vietnam. Nor is this 1918 and Iraq is not Alsace Loraine. But the consequences for both nations will be real when we leave. When a nation puts for such an effort and then fails there is blowback. If the President pulls us out that would be a good thing and we could survive that. But if he is forced to pull them out then the fight will not be over and in that case I really fear for the future of America.