Bushists allow jihadists to define the terms of "victory" in Iraq

Stephen Elliot, at HuffingtonPost.com, points out that the National Strategy plan Bush laid out today continues the brazen Bushist tradition of misleadingly tying Iraq and al Qaeda:




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-elliott/national-strategy-for-vic_b_11459.html


On page four of the paper, we get the subheading Prevailing in Iraq will help us win the war on terror. Following that are three bullet points:

- Osama Bin Laden has declared that the “third world war…is raging” in Iraq, and it will end there, in “either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation.”

- Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has declared Iraq to be “the place for the greatest battle,” where he hopes to “expel the Americans” and then spread “the jihad wave to the
secular countries neighboring Iraq.”

- Al Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has openly declared that “we fight today in Iraq, and tomorrow in the Land of the Two Holy Places, and after there the west.”

It's not that the bullets aren't true, but the intent is clearly to link the war in Iraq with bin-Laden. The presumption being that Iraq has always been about fighting terrorists when what has actually happened is we have created a breeding ground for terrorists.




Elliot makes an excellent point, but what really strikes me is that juxtaposition of the notion of "prevailing in Iraq" with the three references to Qaeda goals in Iraq. Are the Bushists really trying to tell us that the battle won't be won until the jihadists are wiped out? Do they think Americans will throw their support to a war only if they believe the result is that Qaeda will be made miserable and humiliated? Do they think, in other words, that Americans want a holy war?

There are a whole slew of problems with this tack. Number 1, they did not sell the war to Congress or the world as jihad. They sold it as a war against WMD and Saddam's imminently lethal dictatorship (both of which reasons proved to be based on delusion or deception).

It's true that the Bushists worked very hard to sell that idea to the American people, who were happy to buy it when they didn't know how costly a jihad was. Considering that the cost only keeps rising, how likely is it that Americans will buy it again? Anything is possible with Americans, I suppose. But the Bushists have left themselves open to more challenges about how long the jihad will last, whether it will spread to other countries, and how much all of this is going to cost.

why aren't people asking what the hell were you doing invading Iraq in the first place and why the hell are you taking so long to sort it out. People should be using the words lier and incompetent.

Besides he put the jihadists there.....