To the President: Lead!

Dallas Blog | William Murchison:

“For us to win [in Iraq], things would have to get uglier, snarlier, more divisive at home. We would have to take McCain's advice on troop strength. We might have to seal, however imperfectly, Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran, over which money and munitions constantly pour, headed for the murderous militias that have brought Iraqi affairs to this unpleasant pass. We would unmistakably have to pound those militias to powder or at least into temporary submission.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The Iraq Study Group (ISG) addressed William Murchison's preferred alternative course and explained why it would not lead to victory.

"Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation. A senior American general told us that adding U.S. troops might temporarily help limit violence in a highly localized area. However, past experience indicates that the violence would simply rekindle as soon as U.S. forces are moved to another area. As another American general told us, if the Iraqi government does not make political progress, 'all the troops in the world will not provide security.' Meanwhile, America's military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world."

Mr Murchison offers no rebuttal to the ISG's arguments, only exhortation, as if saying something vociferously enough adds a logical foundation to an argument utterly lacking same.

Mr Murchison has a right to be frustrated. All Americans are. He cries out for America to lash out, to "pound those militias to powder", even though he himself lets slip the reality that it would only be "temporary submission". To its credit, the ISG doesn't give in to simplistic recommendations that offer only the temporary satisfaction of "pounding" someone. In the end, Mr Murchison's rant is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Iraq Study Group is a political creation, as Mr Murchison suggests. Its purpose is to provide political cover for the President to extricate America from this disastrous war. If that's what it takes, so be it. The fact is that Mr Murchison's preferred alternative, military victory, is no longer achievable, if it ever was. The longer it takes for President Bush to recognize that and change course, the higher the death toll, the more lasting the damage to America's strategic position in the Middle East and the world, and the less secure we are at home.