Bush's Irrational Exuberance

And in a statement after the vote, right on cue, Perino accused Democrats of undermining the troops: "Today the House of Representatives passed on a largely party-line vote legislation that would only partially fund our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but fully embolden our enemies."

Running Out the Clock

John Podesta, Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis write in a Washington Post op-ed: "Both political parties seem resigned to allowing the Bush administration to run out the clock on its Iraq strategy and bequeath this quagmire to the next president. The result is best described as strategic drift, and stopping it won't be easy.

"President Bush claims that his strategy is having some success, but toward what end? He argued that the surge would provide the political breathing space needed to achieve a unified, peaceful Iraq. But its successes, which Bush says come from a reduction of casualties in certain areas, have been accompanied by massive sectarian cleansing. The surge has not moved us closer to national reconciliation. . . .

"Rather than push for a realistic end to U.S. engagement, the Bush administration claims doomsday scenarios would become reality if a phased U.S. withdrawal began. Iraq, it says, would become a terrorist sanctuary, incite regional war or be the scene of sectarian genocide. These arguments are as faulty as those that led us into Iraq, and progressive leaders must push back. . . .

"The United States must set a firm withdrawal date. It is the only way Iraqis and regional leaders will make the compromises necessary to stabilize Iraq and the entire Middle East. This withdrawal can be completed safely in 12 to 18 months and should be started immediately."

Newsweek's Christopher Dickey bitterly mocks the argument that things are getting better in Iraq: "Aren't the numbers of dead down for the last few weeks? Sure. Ethnic cleansing works and death squads work. The Iraqi capital, once unified and cosmopolitan, is now cut up into insular little communities. Since the militias' campaigns of murder, mutilation, intimidation and reprisal have achieved their ends, there's no need to keep the slaughter going. Never mind the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and the destruction of the modern state."

Dickey rails against the war's "human costs and, on a broader scale, the incalculable price Americans already are paying in lost influence, reputation, business and security around the world. Once a nation to be admired for its ideals and feared for its strength, under this administration the United States has been transformed into a country derided for its hypocrisy and feared for its stupidity. Al Qaeda's horrific attacks on New York and Washington may have triggered the blind rage and excused the willful blindness that led us to this pass, but an incurious public, a feckless press and a flaccid opposition have been complicit all the way, and they still are. . . .

"I'd like to think that in the dark of night our leaders feel guilty or ashamed. But I don't think they do. Do you?"

Martin Schram writes in his Scripps Howard opinion column: "What would George W. Bush and Dick Cheney be saying today if they were campaigning politicians running against a President Clinton (either one of them) who had outsourced our responsibility to retaliate against Osama bin Laden for his 9/11 attacks on our homeland?

"What would Karl Rove have been whipping up for Bush to say and what would Cheney (who needs no Roving ambassador) be saying on his own about a president from the other party who had chosen to allow al Qaeda's leader to escape into Pakistan's northern tribal areas of Islamic militancy? . . .

"What if the reason a President Clinton hadn't teamed up to launch a joint military operation with Pakistan to capture bin Laden was that he/she had over-extended the U.S. military and gotten the troops pinned down in Iraq -- and had to divert resources from efforts to crush the forces that attacked America's mainland in 2001 so that in 2007 he/she still couldn't complete the retaliation he/she had pledged to lead? What if a President Clinton had actually allowed bin Laden to remain at large, videotaping his taunts against America, whose president had vowed to get him, dead or alive, many years ago?

"We all know the answer: What Bush-Cheney-Rove and company would have done to either Clinton would have made what they did to one-time Vietnam War POW John McCain, triple-amputee Vietnam veteran Max Cleland and Vietnam Purple Heart medalist John Kerry look like a Crawford, Texas, picnic. They would have accused either Clinton of selling out and ducking out, of cutting and running from the vow to get Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda. . . .