Define winning

I still want to know. I read a few conservative blogs, the latest one called Screw Liberals (how creative), and all they do is rail about the "defeatocrats" attempts to disentangle our military from Iraq. I frequently ask them what "winning" means, and hear nary a peep back. I keep asking Skydiverick how long we leave our military in the Iraqi meat grinder. 1 more year? 5 more? 10 more? Permanently?

You can hear the crickets chirp.

What most people don't understand is, the war can't be "won" as it's not a military issue. I know I'm repeating myself, but I can't stress enough that our military was built to destroy shit. They can blow shit up better than any organization in the history of this planet. What they cannot do is convince the Iraqis to suddenly drop their arms, embrace between Shia and Sunni, and they cannot transform Iraq into a democratic secular oasis in the middle of a bat shit crazy Islamist middle east.

It cannot be done, any alternative that anyone puts forward to change this disastrous course is characterized by the GARWL's as "against America". I shit you not. These right wing blogs are dripping with accusations that "liberals hate America". I really don't get it.

Look, let me boil this down to real simple terms. It's 4 years after "mission accomplished" and last month was one of the deadliest on record for American troops.

BAGHDAD, May 20 (Reuters) - Six U.S. soldiers and an interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad on Saturday, the U.S. military said in a statement on Sunday.

That was 3 days ago. Six of America's best, dead. It won't get "better". It won't stop as long as our military is in Iraq.

So how in the hell can advocates of ending the bloodshed of American soldiers possibly be considered "anti-American"? It just boggles the imagination!

However, there are some definite problems with a withdrawal from Iraq. That is the dilemma that Bush has created for this nation. Sullivan writes;

A US withdrawal or redeployment will almost certainly mean a Darfur in Iraq. Unlike Darfur, however, this genocide will have been precipitated by the US, just as its conditions were laid by the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush occupation strategy.

Additionally, Bush keeps saying that if the American military is redeployed, the terrorists will have "won". He could have declared victory and withdrawn the troops years ago, but for some reason he has created this definition of "winning" and "losing" in order to keep our military in Iraq.

So, here are our options. We leave our military in Iraq, the civil war continues, many Iraqis die, Americans die, and it goes on for years. Or, we redeploy our troops, the civil war continues, many Iraqis die until they decide that killing each other is not in their best interest.

How can these GARWL's even begin to claim that desiring to end the war is "anti-American"? It just doesn't make any sense. I think their vitriol has more to do with the "culture war" here at home, rather than the real war over in Iraq.