Most of the focus on the war effort is now two-fold: force protection and training the Iraqis to run their own country after decades of not knowing how. Let’s not forget that it took nearly a decade of ruinous economics and struggle for the US to emerge as a coherent entity after the Revolution: in the MTV generation, we apparently don’t think that amount of time to create a country is good enough. The US forces are actively engaged every day in training Iraqi military leaders and soldiers, recruiting and training police officers and security personnel and putting together a government that does not know itself what it wants to be or how it wants to organize. It takes time, money and the sacrifice of good men (and women) who gut it out, suck it up, make sacrifices both personal and professional in support of what the nation and the nation’s leaders have asked us in the military to accomplish.

This is a point that seems to have been mostly ignored by people who are in favour of a quick pullout. It’s dangerous to believe you have the power to jump start a nation’s government after decades of tyranny and oppression. It’s more dangerous to believe that the process will be quick. And it’s a fallacy to ignore the need for sacrifice, which is why the oft-repeated anti-war strain “No blood for oil” rang so falsely. It set up a strawman that deliberately denied the more obvious and noble purpose of troop involvement and sacrifice in favour of an easy slogan to marshall the opposition into a unified front, regardless of the content and validity of their arguments.
James also notes that the Iraqi people are themselves ultimately responsible for learning how to recreate a democratic government (before the Baathists coups, Iraq was a more free and liberal country than it is now), but that it will take action and dedication, as well as national will for any real change to be effected. This is a sentiment I first read in Steven Vincent’s In the Red Zone, and it strikes me as even more salient the further into the “occupation” we continue.
It remains to be seen what the outcome of Iraq will be. I have hope that men and women like my brother and the SEALs and the many troops stationed and fighting there can make the kind of difference that is needed.

“I have introduced a resolution that calls on President Bush to define the mission of our military in Iraq, set a plan to accomplish that mission and establish a timeframe for the withdrawal of US troops, so that we can provide some clarity with regard to our intentions and restore confidence at home and abroad.”

I doubt any such resolution will garner much appreciation from folks who simply want us out NOW NOW NOW. Any defined mission (other than to exit Iraq) will be met with acrimony, any plan to accomplish said mission (again, other than to exit Iraq) will be decried, and any timetable set won’t be fast enough.
The problem is the military is being used now as an enforcement tool rather than a…military. That tends to be bad for infrastructure, since enforcement generally takes precedence over rebuilding (which is why many reports from Baghdad, Kabul, Mosul, etc mention the horrible living conditions that were present under Saddam, but which have been exacerbated by his overthrow and the subsequent vaccuum left behind).
However, to exit before Iraq has the national will to both run itself and eliminate (or diminish) the threat from domestic terror (or insurgency, if you like) would be fatal to the entire purpose of the war effort and democratic reform process.
So the question is (and always has been) when will we know when it is well and truly time to leave? Neither Bush, nor Rumsfeld, nor any politician or military personnel, nor even any Iraqi or Middle Eastern resident know the answer to that. It is a question, not of timetables and exit strategies, but of the collective abilities of all to discern the times and determine, when the time finally is right, how to go about leaving Iraq for good.
I just don’t think anyone can or is ready to answer that, and to do so prematurely through a specific timetable, is to knock on the door of disaster.

Newsweek relied on faulty intelligence to write a magazine article. George W. Bush relied on faulty intelligence to start a war which has cost over $200 billion, and which has taken the lives of over 1600 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Here’s the difference. Newsweek didn’t know its intelligence was phony. And Newsweek apologized.

Wait. Fault or phony, which is it? There is a difference, you know. And even if Newsweek didn’t know its intelligence was phony, they sure rushed to put that information out, which has helped splinter relations with Afghanistan (most Iraqis seem less affected by the phony allegations of Koran flushing). How long did Newsweek wait to post their uncorroborated source material? A week? That’s pretty generous, considering how little vetting that info actually received. My bet’s on the hour. Rush that sucker, it further paints a picture of the decadent corruption of the American military!
Here’s the real difference: Bush supplied more than faulty intelligence for adequate reasons to go to war. And he waited a year and a half after 9/11 to give other options a chance. Given the good faith Bush supplied the UN in offering that corrupt world governing body a chance to actually follow its mandate, and knowing now how nearly every country who opposed invasion had their hands stuck so far up Saddam’s coffers they came out looking guilded, it’s a stretch to compare a shoddy reporting job with a legitimate attempt at restructuring the Middle East through a process of war, diplomacy, and installation of infant democracy. Big stretch.
The author of that post better get with the party line there at the Hufflepuff Post regarding civilian dead. It’s 100,000+, you dolt! Not tens of thousands!
And I’ll be waiting in line tonight for the big event. You know the one. Revenge of the Sith, or How I Learned to Cause Fanboys and Nerds to Stop Living and Prostrate Themselves At the Throne of the Almighty George. I think that second part is an unofficial title. I have criticized Lucas before, even offering some suggestions for Episode Three titles. But I can be gracious when I need to be. I will admit to being excited, though not ecstatic, at the prospect of this dark third. Maybe it’ll be good. Maybe it’ll blow my low expectations into orbit. Maybe, just maybe, Jar Jar will die.
And maybe Shooter5 is reading this now. If so…you were right.