Pussyfooting around "the Surge" and "victory"

Our side is afraid to be negative, plain and simple. We are afraid to say that Iraq was a debacle and a huge net loss for the United States. Why?

McCain dangles "victory" in front of the American people. He claims he was "right" about the surge and the need for more troops. And no one dares state the obvious: we have won nothing. The "victory"" achieved by Bush and McCain has been a victory with no spoils, a victory at huge cost, a victory that holds only while we pump billions of hard-earned tax dollars into it every week. It is a sham. The Middle East is far more unstable than before Bush got into office. The bottom line speaks.

But no one dares to listen to what it says.

What if we had pulled out five years ago instead of stubbornly hanging onto Iraq and keeping troops there as Bush and McCain forced us to do? Maybe Iraq would be much further along. Maybe Afghanistan would not be in jeopardy. Who can say otherwise? The MSM would feign shock, of course, but then two days later, like clockwork, they would be openly mulling over the shocking proposition that Iraq was stupid, that it won us nothing, and that the troop withdrawal that a vast majority of Americans favored would have in fact worked better than the cling and surge strategy of Bush and McCain.

What if we had pulled out when Bush and McCain forced us to surge? Maybe Iraq would be exactly where it is now or better off. How do we know that our departure would not have simply produced exactly the same result as the surge or even a better result? We don't know that. But the American people are being allowed to drift into a position where they believe there is no doubt.

I think we don't say it, because we are afraid of taking credit for a victory from the troops. And McCain and Palin are absolutely making a political/rhetorical bulwark of that. They constantly praise the troops for the "success of the surge," making and politically cementing the wrong notion that the surge was successful. Well, it was successful, but maybe we would have been more successful had we not surged. Maybe we would be more successful had we not gone into Iraq in the first place.

Again, the American people did not want the surge, but McCaid did. Were the American people idiots or would their strategy have worked? Are McCain/Palin telling the American people they were wrong?

But worse, are McCain/Palin telling us that they think we need more Iraqs. If Iraq is such a victory for us, and McCain has "been right all along" about us simply needing more troops, isn't that explicitly saying that McCain would not hesitate to get us into another Iraq...just with more troops. Was it not a mistake to go into Iraq? Are we gonna do it again under nutbag and Caribou Barbie? Because if it wasn't wrong, and it got us something, then we definitely should do it again, shouldn't we?

I think this very threat that McCain/Palin pose would help us defeat the "you can't take this victory away from our troops" asinine rhetoric. The troops know they did their jobs well. But do they want a bunch more Iraqs?

The McCain position is a huge sham. We seem afraid to counter it directly, and maybe that position is right. Maybe we can squeeze out a victory hoping the American people will side with us because of the economy and Republican incompetence and corruption. I personally find little hope in that strategy. Mencken and Barnum and Twain were right.