Regardless of who wins on Nov 2 (or a few weeks later in the Supreme Court) I think the war in Iraq will play out essentially the same. There will be a 2 pronged stragety which will allow us to claim victory and bring alot of the troops home. Thousands will of course stay there in our new bases.
The first part is the continuing transfer of sovereignty over to Iraq’s. This is important for the PR reasons we all like to talk about but also for another reason we don’t like to talk about. Iraqi’s will be able to be more nasty than we are willing to be in dealing with the most difficult parts of the resistance. You might remember VP Cheney mentioning El Salvador as a model in the debate with Edwards. The former Secretary of Defense was right on with that comparison. I think the future is going to look alot like that.
The second part of the strategy is much simpler. We will achive victory by using the time honored tradition of defining down the goals. We’ve had alot of practice in re-defining the reasons for the war and the exit strategy will be no different. We had a goal of having a Free and Democratic Iraq as a shining example to all of the middle east. Somehow this Democratic Iraq was even going to be friend to Israel. We aren’t going to make much progress on ending the war as long as people are smoking that crack pipe. We’ll have to change that tune to a new one that people can sing without laughing under thier breath. Its going to be about stabiliy not democracy and security not freedom. The process is already started but will speed up after Nov 2 (again regardless of who wins). By the time elections happen in Iraq, the President at the time will be only too happy to overstate thier significance and turn a blind eye to the actions used by the “Iraqi” govt. to establish order.
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