Is Iraq War Lost?

Conservatives are making a big deal out of Sen. Harry Reid's statement that the Iraq War is "lost". The "war" was won a few weeks after we invaded Iraq in 2003. Shortly afterwards Pres. Bush announced "mission accomplished". What was the mission? To prevent Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction. Oops. No WMD's found in Iraq. Ok, well, we also wanted to depose Saddam and make Iraq into a democracy and a friend of the USA in the Middle East. We helped the Iraqis put into place a democratic form of representative government. But, fundamentalist Shia's are the majority party in Iraq. They don't want a secular democratic representative government. They now see us as an occupying force. Iraq never was a real country to begin with and it didn't take long for tribalism to rear its ugly head. Bush was warned about this possibility by his own State Department.

So, we are still fighting in Iraq. But who are we fighting? Shias? Sunnis? Foreign insurgents? Al Qaeda? Doesn't someone have to surrender in order to "win" a war? Can you even have a war if there isn't someone in power that has the authority to surrender? Sounds more and more like a civil war doesn't it? What exactly is the Bush definition of "winning" the war. It changes from month to month. Just how long is it going to take to "train" those Iraqi security forces?

The sad thing is that maybe the war could have been "won" in the weeks after the USA invasion. But, as in almost everything else, Bush and his cronies were incompetent. Their "it's our way or the highway" didn't work then and it's not working now.

We, and I really mean all of us, screwed up badly 4 years ago. Those in favor of war couldn't be bothered to wait for solid evidence to justify a pre-emptive attack on Iraq (mushroom cloud and all). Some were in favor because it wouldn't have been "patriotic" to be opposed to the war. Afterall, remember 9/11? Those opposed to the war didn't oppose it strongly enough. Maybe because we saw that there really wasn't anyone in goverment ready, willing and able to listen. The media was complicit in promoting the Bush administrations promotion of the war. Most of which we now know really was based on lies.

Next Tue (May 1) is the 4th anniversary of the great "mission accomplished" speech. Maybe the mission was accomplished. But it was accomplished in the same incompetent manner most everything else the government hating GW Bush has touched.

That's my rant and I'm sticking to it.