The situation is not unlike that in Vietnam. The insurgents don’t have to defeat the U.S. and U.K. All they have to do is wait us out, while making it costly for us to stay there, and making sure that no stability is ever achieved. That’s not hard to do, as they are demonstrating.
At the risk of repeating myself, it doesn’t matter whether we pull out of Iraq tomorrow, next week, next month, or a year from now. Regardless of when we leave, six months later (give or take), after a brief but bloody civil war, there will be a fundamentalist Islamic republic in Iraq, controlled by the more radical Shiites, and loosely allied with Iran. By staying there, all we’re doing is costing lives, pouring money down a rat hole, and continuing to generate hostility directed towards the U.S. In the end, it’s all going to be for nothing, and instead of having to deal with a few thousand Al Qaida-style terrorists, we’re going to be faced with tens of thousands of them, all pissed off by what we’ve done in Iraq.
I genuinely wish Kerry had the cajones to say this, and pledge to get us out immediately. This election is beginning to remind me of 1968.