Our troops overwhelmingly want reassurance

General Richard Myers, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is finally at long last thinking ahead about Iraq. He is planning strategically to assign blame for that clusterfuck and, surprise surprise, it’s the old stab-in-the-back theory (Dolchstoß in the original German, and most recently seen in the smearing of John Kerry for undermining the national will to win in Vietnam). The soldiers are all great and “want to finish the job at hand” and don’t think they’re losing at all, says Myers, but “Our troops overwhelmingly want reassurance that they will be allowed to finish what we began four years ago.” Really, that’s what the troops want, reassurance that they can stay in Iraq waiting for victory, or an IED as the case might be? “This military can do anything as long as they have the will and resolve of the American people.” No it can’t. It can’t turn another country into a liberal, democratic, peaceful state by military means, and your failure to understand that is an ongoing problem. Stop blaming the media for not showing all the good news. Stop talking about our nation’s “will and resolve,” because closing our eyes and wishing really hard will not actually change the facts on the ground in Iraq.

This sort of talk is no longer about trying to silence the war critics. The US has already lost and I think Myers, if not Bush and Rumsfeld, knows this. It’s about explaining why it wasn’t his fault. Good luck with that, Myers, you’ll need it.