Fall election will be about Iraq

  The right wing of the Republican party pounds on the war drums with ever-increasing vigor. Americans will be in no doubt about that issue, though the liars and the paranoids, who will tell you that Sen. Barack Obama is an Islamo-fascist spy who went to a school for terrorists, may still be able to blur the issue, just as the Swift Boat fanatics did four years ago. The Republican candidates will continue to denounce their opponents as cowards and traitors. They will continue to insist, as does the current incumbent, that the war is an essential struggle against terrorists and that there is no substitute for victory.

  They will repeat the cliche that "the surge is working." They will also assert that the "troops" are begging for a chance to fight the war till we win. The "surge" of American troops to Iraq was supposed to provide time to force the Iraqi government to assume responsibility for its own destiny. There has been some decline in the casualties in Iraq, though 2007 was the bloodiest year of the long war. Negotiations among the various factions and factions within factions in Iraq are still painfully slow.

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 American dollars and fear of foreign fanatics did persuade some Sunni factions to ally themselves temporarily with Americans. But it does not seem to occur to those who offer free advice -- whether they be speakers on the floor of the Senate or editorial writers at the New York Times -- that the reason the Iraqi government does not negotiate a satisfactory modus vivendi among its warring tribes is that it cannot. Another 100 years of American surging will not eliminate the ancient and violent tradition of fratricidal killing in Iraq.

  Our stupid, patronizing and concrete-headed interventions in their hatreds for one another are one more result of the Bush Doctrine: We must impose American-style democracy on all countries, even if it patently and blatantly doesn't work.

  The putative GOP presidential candidate, McCain, will be hailed as an inspiring national hero and a brilliant military leader. He is certainly the former. His survival in Vietnamese prisons permits no doubt he has the character and the fortitude to endure almost unimaginable torments. However, courage and character do not necessarily guarantee strategic genius.

  He has not produced any innovations that deviate from the strategy of the last five years. It is one thing to complain about the refusal of the administration to provide enough troops to win the war back in 2003 and quite another to propose that we take seriously today Gen. Eric Shinseki's estimate that several hundred thousand Americans would have been required to be sure of victory. Fighter pilots are not expected to devise new strategies. 

Read Father Greeley's latest Articles: 
Fall election will be about Iraq               What were Clintons thinking? 
Politically correct votes absurd              Will voters learn from experience?
Experience no substitute for vision         Keep my God out of your politics
Why won't Bush admit mistakes?          Bush not swayed by Iraq reality
True or false: Can Bush tell difference?   A church 'scandal' that isn't.
Suddenly, greed doesn't look good         Bush's cloak-and-stagger folly.
Bumbling CIA's failures hurt America       Will we betray our Iraqi workers?
 

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