More Talk about Moving the Goalpost

rubber hose: talk about moving the goal post

upyernoz at the post linked above says that his reaction to the Post's recent "lowering [our] sites on what can be achieved in Iraq" article was that it seemed like the punchline of a sick joke.

i mean, if our goal was to set up an islamic republic in iraq, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to have just let iran win the iran-iraq war? is the bush administration really willing to tell the families of dead soldiers that their loss was worth it for the worthy goal of spreading islamic republicanism throughout the muslim world? will the right wing bloggers point to every islamic revolution in the region and attribute it to george bush's "tsunami of islamic republicanism"? and how exactly does the bush administration perform its next feat of rhetorical gymnastics: go from condemning the "moolahs of iran" to cheering the spread of their system of government?

True that.

It is nevertheless a good sign from the perspective of this anti-war "activist."

From where I sit, it no longer appears (if it ever even did) that we can "win" the war. There was a time when I flirted with Powell's "Pottery Barn" rule - in essence that since we broke Iraq, we need to fix it. I honestly don't think that it can be "fixed" now as long as US forces remain there. While I would like to see live return to normal or better-than-normal for the Iraqi people, I believe that the first and most important step - the best for all peoples concerned - is the unabashed anti-war position of advocating for immediate withdrawal or perhaps more accurately, that we "cut and run."

Crude and callous?

Perhaps - but I believe in my humanitarian heart of hearts that the most important task at hand is to end the hot war currently being prosecuted at the hands of the world's only remaining superpower. Then, once we're gone, as we watch Iraq descend deeper into its hell-cauldron, we can discuss what went wrong and plan what to do next - with our servicemen and women home safely and the #1 reason for everybody else in the rest of the world to hate us off the table. (There will be those who will hate us for abandoning the project - but they'll hate us less than the ones who hate us just for being there... The world is united against this war and our continued presence there.)

Our departure won't happen overnight. First we'll have to watch the "stay the course" rhetoric slowly collapse and implode. The Post article shows that this is happening at the very top - where it obviously needs to happen in order for policy to change.

A first step - perverse and sad - but nevertheless real and necessary as we seek to bring this abomination to an end.

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