Lanya, I appreciate your comments deeply and thank you for them. Yet, as I've tried to pose the question over these last many weeks, there is no clear solution to the Iraq situation for responsible-minded folks. At this point, stripped of all the administrations grand ambitions and ego investment, the task is to draw American involvement to the most successful conclusion possible under the realities we face. At the same time however, we must be looking forward and positioning ourselves for the long, difficult struggle with violent, radical Islam, a conflict we simply can't afford to lose. (This latter struggle, the "main event," needs, as I've stated, a multifaceted offensive using every mode of engagement at our disposal in a more or less coordinated effort to allow the wisdom of moderate Islam to triumph.) As to this overall struggle, I note that even today a battleground is blasting in Somalia, again, indicating at least to me that there is much religious/political/cultural attraction for a jihad which could spread to vulnerable sites. This is serious business, and it cannot be underestimated. As the poison of fascism spread far enough and deep enough to bring all the members of a great nation under its thrall, so to, I suggest, like the Bolsheviks before them (switching political metaphors), the violent, radical Islamists may attract just enough followers, adherents and fighters, and grab hold of just enough levers of power in the Muslim world, to transform its quest into a widely-supported movement.
Iraq is a battle in that overall struggle, not the war itself. Strategic decisions have to be made in terms of our overall purpose, not simply the outcome of one front. In assessing Iraq's significance in that larger context, we have to be acutely aware of realities (no nation has ever won a war by ignoring them). It may well be that Iraq is now lost in the sense that a rabid civil war is inevitable and the consequent political structure thereafter is beyond are ability to influence and control. Yet, that is a speculation and not a foregone conclusion.
As I have analyzed the situation, there is a possibility that a surge could buy enough time to salvage the present Iraqi government and perhaps allow its perpetuation, yielding an outcome much more favorable, if remote, to our interests and the majority of the Iraqi people themselves. Thus, I sumit, a surge is a rational approach to the problem even if its success is against the odds.
On the other hand, beginning withdrawal is also a rational choice, but it has an equally unsure foundation: what do we do -- under the situation now facing us, not the folly and mismanagement that has brought us to this pass -- to assure the best possible launch-point post-Iraq to fight and win the overall war against violent, radical Islam? As far as I can see, matching Bush's myopia, the Democrats have not defined such a program or vision, the one that could seize the strategic moment and inject more rationality and promise into our fight.
By default then, and extrapolated nationally, I will support, until another "tipping point" clearly arises, whatever rational strategy emerges from the present review and renew process. This means I will share my "nephew's" and my friend's mission as well as their hopes, enthusiasms, etc. I say "extrapolated nationally" in the first sentence in this paragraph because every soldier and Marine, OUR fighting men and women, needs our heartfelt solidarity as much as our detached prayers. The only difference now for me is that I am now intimately connected to the danger they face while doing their nation's business, rather than being abstractly connected by an image I say I revere: the brave and innocent soldier standing sentry to guard the life I treasure more than anything in the world save for God's providence.
