<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2006/10/22/what_does_staying_the_course_mean>
What does staying the course mean?
By George Will
Sunday, October 22, 2006
A realist with a wintry smile, James A. Baker III, who helped make
George W. Bush's presidency possible, is seeking ways to salvage it.
After the 2000 election, Baker orchestrated the Bush campaign's
lawyering against the Gore campaign's lawyering that tried to overturn
Bush's 537-vote Florida margin. Today Baker is co-chairman -- with
former congressman Lee Hamilton, the Indiana Democrat -- of the Iraq
Study Group, which will issue recommendations after Thanksgiving.
International crises rarely conform tidily to electoral cycles. Too
bad. America's electoral cycles are constitutional facts: Every two
years, elections take the nation's temperature; every four years, the
nation selects the occupant of the office responsible for formulating
foreign policy.
Today the policy of "staying the course" means Americans dying to
prevent Shiites and Sunnis from killing each other. If in January
2009 more than 100,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq, there might be 100
fewer Republicans in Congress. So "stay the course" is a policy
stamped with an expiration date.
[...]
What are 140,000 U.S. forces achieving in Iraq that could not be
achieved by 40,000? If the answer is "creating Iraqi security
forces," a second question is: Is there an Iraqi government? In
"State of Denial," Bob Woodward quotes Colin Powell, after leaving
the administration, telling the president that strengthening Iraq's
military and police forces is crucial, but that "if you don't have a
government that you can connect these forces to, then, Mr. President,
you're not building up forces, you're building up militias." And
making matters worse.
[...]
In September 1942 the U.S. government purchased 58,575 acres of
wilderness in eastern Tennessee. Soon there was a town, Oak Ridge, and
amazing scientific facilities. Thirty-four months after the purchase,
an atomic blast lit the New Mexico desert. After 43 months in Iraq,
U.S. forces still struggle to cope with improvised explosive devices.
On Sept. 19, Hamilton said "the next three months are critical." On
Oct. 5, Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee,
said that the next "two or three months" are critical. If only the
worsening insurgency were, as the president suggested Wednesday, akin
to North Vietnam's 1968 Tet Offensive. The insurgency is worse: Tet
was a military defeat for North Vietnam. The president says the war in
Iraq will be "just a comma" in history books, but by Nov. 26, the
Sunday after Thanksgiving, with the Study Group's recommendations due,
the comma will have lasted as long as U.S. involvement in World War
II.
The best way to honor the troops is to put pressure on your
representatives to remove the troops from
being unnecessarily put in harm's way (specifically in Iraq).
Bring the troops home now! Vote for candidates that feel the same way.
Vote Libertarian!
