James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” today has an e-mail from a soldier in Iraq. With his experience with what’s going on with the Army, the culture and the changing circumstances, his suggestion is that the correct policy needs to be something between “stay the course” and “cut and run”. It seems to me to be a very insightful look at reality there. Some of his suggestions are, I’ll admit, tough to swallow if indeed they’d be necessary. Definitely worth the read (and as always, getting the daily e-mail of this column is recommended). He concludes:

James, there’s a lot more to this than I’ve written here. The short of it is, the situation is salvageable, but not with “stay the course” and certainly not with cut and run. However, the commitment required to save it is something I doubt the American public is willing to swallow. I just don’t see the current administration with the political capital remaining in order to properly motivate and convince the American public (or the West in general) of the necessity of these actions.

At the same time, failure in Iraq would be worse than a dozen Somalias, and would render us as impotent and emasculated as we were in the days after Vietnam. There is a global cultural-ideological struggle being waged, and abdication from Iraq is tantamount to concession.

Later, Taranto quotes Nancy Pelosi, who’d most likely be Speaker of the House after a majority Democrat win.

“But you don’t think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?” Stahl continues.

“They have,” Pelosi agrees. “The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean we stay there. They’ll stay there as long as we’re there.”

She seems to think (or is trying to sell us on the idea) that the moment we leave, all will be well with the world and the jihadists will become model citizens or at least stop attacking American interests. As the sergeant tells us (gotta read the whole thing), there’s more going on than just terrorism, and it’s not easily dealt with, and especially not dealt with by running away.

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Filed under: DemocratsForeign PolicyIraqMiddle EastMilitaryPoliticsTerrorismWar

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