The Withdrawal Method
Woo hoo! Break out the champagne and confetti! The war in Iraq is over! Strike up the band, put on your dance shoes, and...huh?...what's that you say? The war isn't even close to over? C'mon, give me a break. CNN and MSNBC both devoted their whole night of programing to the end of this seven and a half year monument to military futility. I saw those behemoth vehicles of the 4th Stryker Brigade, each larger than my first house, lumbering across the border into Kuwait. No, put a fork in it, last nail in the coffin, have a cigarette and a roast beef sandwich...this thing is done.
Say what? There's still over 50,000 troops left in Iraq? Oh, ok, ummm...but they're not combat troops, right? Sure, fine, they're still wearing six inches of kevlar body armor and they've got automatic assault rifles, hand grenades, and a direct line to a dozen squadrons of F-16's...but they're not going to shoot anyone...unless, of course, someone shoots them first, and that hardly ever happens in the newly democratized and pacified People's Peaceful Republic of Iraq (ok, I made that up).
Who the hell are they trying to kid? If this was birth control, and in respect to the wishes of the Vatican, Operation Rescue, and Sarah Palin, you were practicing the "withdrawal method", this would be like pulling it halfway out and promising your partner you absolutely positively wouldn't come...until she was ready to assume full responsibility for the result.
This is just more political sleight of hand. Obama promised he'd end the war in Iraq, and now he says he's made good on his promise. If this is how a war ends, we might as well make Doublespeak the new official national language. We all know when a war is over. It's over when the place we invaded looks just like it did the day before our troops arrived (minus the dictator, the mass graves, the torture chambers, the palaces, and all that nasty stuff)...which is to say it's over when there's not a single GI wearing an American flag patch for a thousand miles in any direction. Give me a call when that happens and I'll join the party.
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