The Key Iraqi War Date

07/09/2007

Paul Munnis


We should all make a mental note that 7/7/07 was the date when America stopped talking about the need to end the Iraqi War and began talking about how to do it with a degree of grace and safety for our troops.

That is now the case. The War is ending; our troops are coming home; and we need to develop the details carefully to do this extraction from the mid-east safely.

The July 4th checkpoint has been taken by the American people, the War in Iraq is judged a failure as is the troop surge exercise.

What has cemented this realization is that the U.S. government can no longer execute its responsibility to protect Iraqis from death. The Iraqi government has acknowledged this by advising Iraqi citizens to take up arms to protect themselves. The surge of 160,000 U.S. troops has not provided the needed assurance of citizen safety. America has lost the war in Iraq. Civil War is reigning in Iraq while the Iraqi government has pretty well collapsed.

A judgment about our troop safety in Afghanistan will be made for their backs are now going to be exposed. NATO will be making the same judgment as an organization.

Government always lags the judgment of the people and it will take them a few months to get aboard. A lot of egos must be salved in our government before power bows to power. That means a lot of posturing for election in 2008 lies ahead.

The rest is just a lot of legislative leftover dross to be cleaned up. As Congress returns and bickers over legislative hearings and Executive vs Congressional privilege they seem less and less in tune with America's immediate problem. Many of the battles Congress is now fighting will just go away once Bush resigns from office and they can be cleaned up at a more leisurely pace then.

Getting our troops safely extracted from Iraq is an important matter. An extraction is a dangerous maneuver, it can cause a lot of loss of life if it’s screwed up, and extraction should not be put under cost control or made into a political football for press entertainment. It is far too vital to be left to politicians.

Let’s get our troops out safely and then we will be amply rewarded as a result.

This War has been a disaster let’s make sure that ending it is a success.

We expect Bush to make things difficult for our troops for he no longer supports them. America needs a good diplomatic job done and Negroponte is the man in place to make it happen. Congress should haul him up to the hill and give him the needed commission to handle the diplomacy. Condy Rice is missing in action. The Bush Cabinet will soon be quitting en masse.

We expect Congress to do a dance trying to optimize politics for political advantage and cover. None of that must cost a single American life.

Gates has the most important job of his life to do now and he must do it well. He needs to begin with good planning and then redirect General Petraeus to begin extraction according to plan. He needs to interlock with our State Department. He needs to manage the political flack coming his way from the GOP.

We expect that by September Bush will resign from the Presidency along with Chaney. Good riddance.

Nancy Pelosi will become the new President of the USA. The GOP will become extinct as a political Party.

We can then move on.