The Old Man & The War: The Lost Years

Think of the Iraq war as an old man.

This old man would like nothing more than to go out in a blaze of glory. But his life is dominated by fights with a sister in law, and as he shuffles around his thoughts frequently turn melancholy as he thinks back to when he was young, full of piss and vinegar and the world was his red, white and blue oyster.

"You goddamned blowhard!" screeches the sister in law. "You wasted all those goddamned years! You never did what you said you were gonna do and now that you’re finally doin’ it it’s too goddamned late to make any difference to anyone, let alone your long-sufferin' family!"

The old man is tempted to give the crone a pop in the kisser, but instead mutters barely comprehensible imprecations and wonders if his bladder will hold out until it’s time to take the paratransit bus back to the Crawford Convalescent Center. But under the medals on the breast of his frayed dress uniform jacket he knows in his heart that she is right:

Instead of hunkering down and working hard, he wasted years bragging that he had the Biggest You Know What on the playing field and calling everyone who didn’t agree with him an unpatriotic coward.

* * * * *

Alas, it is this analogy that comes to mind as we slouch toward the Bush administration's September "progress report" on the Iraq war and the lead-pipe cinch certainty that despite signs of some progress on the battlefield, what ultimately is the most important kind of progress – Iraqi political reconciliation – is as dead as the once limber timber between the old man’s legs.

This in turn brings us to two wise souls who have given up on plucking victory from the jaws of defeat and are trying to find a way to responsibly end the U.S.'s open-ended presence in Iraq.

First there is Michael Igatieff, a lapsed academic who writes in The New York Times Magazine that:

"The decision facing the United States over Iraq is paradigmatic of political judgment at its most difficult. Staying and leaving each have huge costs. One thing is clear: The costs of staying will be borne by Americans, while the cost of leaving will be mostly borne by Iraqis. That in itself suggests how American leaders are likely to decide the question.

"But they must decide, and soon. Procrastination is even costlier in politics than it is in private life. The sign on Truman’s desk — 'The buck stops here!' — reminds us that those who make good judgments in politics tend to be those who do not shrink from the responsibility of making them. In the case of Iraq, deciding what course of action to pursue next requires first admitting that all courses of action thus far have failed."

Then there is Rick Moran, who still calls his excellent blog Rightwing Nuthouse.

Moran goes beyond Ignatieff's polemicizing and once he holsters his left-wing super soaker and gets down to business, provides a reasonable proposal:

"The situation cries out for a bi-partisan solution between Congress and the White House. In order for that to happen both sides have to recognize that neither of them can achieve their goals. The Democratic left is not going to be able to cut and run from Iraq. The Republican right is not going to be able to stay indefinitely, endlessly engaged in a struggle against ghosts.

" . . . We can’t leave precipitously and we can’t stay forever. What’s the solution? The situation doesn’t lend itself to the easy talking points of either side which is why both my right and left leaning readers and commenters will not be pleased. Believe me, I’d love to write a post on Iraq just once where only one side gave me hell. But the times and situation in Iraq demand a little bit more out of all of us.

"The only way out of Iraq that least harms our national security interests . . . that would leave Iraq with a chance at peace is together. And after we leave, the hard part begins. Staying engaged also would demand a bi-partisan consensus with the acknowledgement by both sides that there may be certain circumstances where we would have to send troops back into Iraq to save it from external threats or other disasters."

Ahem. As I suspect Ignatieff and Moran know in their own hearts, real rapproachement on Iraq is as dead as the old man will someday be.

The reason, of course, is exactly what the sister in law says: The years the Bush administration spent not doing the hard work of leadership and statecraft, but instead bragging, lambasting, shucking and jiving and blowing smoke up the collective American backside, in the process squandering its most precious asset – credibility -- as thousands died to no good end.