What did I just say in the previous posts? Now the paper to which we must all bow, The Boston Globe, has said it too. OK, I suppose technically, although Jeff Jacoby writes for the Globe, he really isn't of the Globe. Still. He closes with this:
Things have gone wrong in Iraq as they go wrong in every war. Bush's strategy of defeating Islamist terrorism by draining the swamps of dictatorship and fanaticism in which it breeds carries a high price tag. Nearly 1,900 US soldiers have been killed and more than 14,000 wounded in Iraq so far. There are more casualties to come.
But another Vietnam? No -- not when such strong support for the war comes from the very soldiers who are in harm's way. Their high morale, their faith in their mission, their conviction that we are doing good -- those are the signals to heed, not the counsels of despair on the TV talk shows. It will be time to give up on Iraq when the troops give up on Iraq. So far, there's no sign they will.
It's the thing that I'm constantly harping on when I have these discussions with my mother-in-law. Yeah, mistakes happen. That's a part of war. The issue is to complete the mission despite the mistakes rather than pull back & run away. In other words, to toss in a historical parallel, we want to be General Grant, not General Maclellan.
No comments:
Post a Comment